


bleed on all the edges round you

by mycanonnevercame



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fix-It, Karen can do a little murder. As a treat., Pining, Roommates, Slow Burn, Whump, but this is in no way a karedevil fic, mature rating mainly for swearing and murder, there is a karedevil component of this fic because that happened in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28965201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycanonnevercame/pseuds/mycanonnevercame
Summary: She doesn’t want justice. She wants Kingpin — Fisk — bruised and begging at her feet; she wants him to die choking on his own blood so he can know some measure of the pain Kevin felt when he died, the pain she’s lived with every day since. Justice cannot encompass that. Justice is cold and passionless, and she wants Kingpin to burn.—AU where Kevin didn’t die in Vermont and Karen was framed for his murder instead of her coworker’s. Also she and Frank end up being roommates who team up to get vengeance for Karen.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 72
Kudos: 106
Collections: Kastle_Feels





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> So I don’t even know how to explain this one. If each season of canon was its own jigsaw puzzle, then for this fic I dumped them all together and only used the pieces I liked. Plus added pieces of my own.
> 
> It’s part canon retelling, part fix it, part canon divergence, and all me wanting Karen to get the catharsis of killing Fisk.
> 
> Also suuuuuper angsty in some spots.
> 
> Been working on this one for quite a while, so I’m excited to finally put it out into the world.
> 
> Fic title is a misheard lyric from Fineshrine by Purity Ring, but I liked how it sounded so I went with it.

She doesn’t cry.

It’s another point against her, as far as her father is concerned. Karen, who always cried when she was too happy or too angry or too sad or even sometimes when she was too bored, did not cry while burying her own brother. A brother dead, if not by her own hand, then as a direct result of her actions.

“I’m going home to Vermont,” her father says when the brief, sad funeral service is concluded and they are the only two mourners left by the grave. Karen doesn’t look up, her eyes fixed on the sprinkling of dirt atop Kevin’s casket. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

She looks up at that, but it’s a reflex. No real emotion accompanies the gesture — she feels numb. Distantly, it occurs to her that she’s still in shock, perhaps in denial. A week from now, this may be devastating, but right now all she can see is Kevin’s sightless eyes staring at her when she woke up next to his body, his blood soaking into her hair and coating her hands.

Her father’s blue eyes, so much like her own in color, are icy with hatred.

“Okay,” she says, her voice a subdued rasp. She can’t remember the last time she drank something, and her throat is dry. Paxton Page sneers at her and turns on his heel without another word.

Karen turns back to the casket. A quick glance around shows that she’s alone. She plunges her hand into her coat pocket, her fingers curling around the flash drive there, the flash drive that has brought her nothing but heartache. She pulls her clenched fist out of her pocket, and with one more furtive look around the cemetery, drops the drive into Kevin’s grave. The black chunk of plastic disappears into the deep shadows in the ground.

“Goodbye, Kevin,” she whispers, and turns to leave.

She doesn’t look back.

* * *

She’s always been an idealist. Always looked for the good in people, always tried to understand their motivations before passing judgment.

Not anymore.

She keeps working at Nelson & Murdock during the day, but her heart isn’t in it. She grows increasingly frustrated with Matt’s absences, with the excuses Foggy makes for him. She feels like she owes them her life, and she’s not sure how to repay that debt. They are the only reason she isn’t in prison, the only reason she was able to attend her brother’s funeral, but she feels dirty and immoral in their presence. Foggy is so genuinely good, and Matt so righteous, and she’s just a recovering addict from Vermont, a girl who shot her abusive boyfriend and abandoned her father to his sorrow, a girl who was framed for her brother’s murder — a murder she might as well have committed herself. She certainly feels guilty enough about it.

She spends more and more time at the Bulletin, learning the journalistic ropes from Ben, arguing with Ellison over ethics. Digging into the archives for information. Haunting the precinct, badgering Mahoney with questions he can’t always answer. She follows the Kingpin’s trail going back more than a year. There’s little to go on, but slowly, painstakingly, she puts the pieces together. Union Allied and her brother’s murder were merely the tip of the iceberg.

* * *

The Man in Black pays her a visit.

“You should back off of Fisk,” he says, nearly blending in with the shadows of her apartment. He seems annoyed but ultimately unconcerned by the gun she has trained on him, her hands steady in spite of the pounding of her heart. “Let me handle it, it’s too dangerous.” She barely contains her snarl. In the rush of rage at his condescension, she nearly misses the slip he made — a name. Fisk. It’s a more solid lead than she’s found in months.

“I want him dead,” she says, her voice low and implacable.

“That’s not how I work.” He’s already turning to leave, dismissing her, message delivered. It makes her want to scream. “You can rest assured, he’ll be brought to justice.”

_Justice_. A thin, pathetic balm for the gaping wound of her loss. She doesn’t want justice. She wants Kingpin — Fisk — bruised and begging at her feet; she wants him to die choking on his own blood so he can know some measure of the pain Kevin felt when he died, the pain she’s lived with every day since. Justice cannot encompass that. Justice is cold and passionless, and she wants Kingpin to _burn_.

“Get out,” she snarls, but he’s already climbing out the window to the fire escape, message delivered, duty done.

She stands there a long time after he’s gone, .380 still aimed at the space he occupied. She’s been looking for the Man in Black, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, for a long time. He’s been instrumental in the fall of multiple gangs over the last year. She hoped he’d help her.

She should have known better. There’d always been a niggling doubt in the back of her mind, a tiny voice that said _he doesn’t want what you want, he doesn’t feel what you feel_. She’d ignored it, stubbornly clinging to the idea of a dark hero who would rally to her cause.

Slowly, she lowers the gun, her arms trembling from holding it up so long. She locks the window, finds something to jam it shut until she can get the locks replaced. She extinguishes any hope she’s attached to the vigilante.

In the morning, she’ll get back to her investigation.

* * *

Ben helps her look into Fisk, teaches her how to keep it quiet so she won’t have the man himself breathing down her neck. He challenges her assumptions and questions her conclusions, guiding her to the truth.

When he dies, she feels like she’s directly responsible.

Murdered. No evidence, no clues as to why, no trail to lead to the killer. She knows, though. She knows.

It’s cold when he’s buried. Karen cries, and she’s horribly relieved — both that she can still do so, and that her father isn’t here to witness it. She tries to apologize to Ben’s wife, but Doris won’t hear it, insisting that Ben died as he lived, and it’s not Karen’s fault. But Karen knows the truth.

* * *

There’s a new vigilante in town, and he’s making a mess.

Karen privately agrees with his aims. He’s cleaning up the gangs, and his methods may be brutal, but they do work. Permanently. All through the spring and early summer he paints Hell’s Kitchen red with the blood of his enemies, and Karen tracks his progress as he decimates the criminal underbelly of the city, cheering him on in the privacy of her heart where no one can judge her for it.

Matt is more absent than ever, and when he does show up he’s bruised and limping. He makes excuses, bullshit about tripping down the stairs or running into doors that Karen isn’t gullible enough to believe. She doesn’t know what’s going on with him, and she doesn’t have the emotional capacity to care much about it right now, but she wishes he’d do her the courtesy of not treating her like she’s stupid.

The Punisher is still carving a bloody swath through the city, and Karen is desperate to find him. None of the gangs have escaped his murder spree unscathed, and a few have been utterly destroyed. The rumor on the street is that Kingpin has put a price on the vigilante’s head.

Anyone who can capture Fisk’s undivided attention is someone Karen wants on her side. Too bad she’s had no more luck locating him than the gangs have. She can’t even figure out who he really is.

* * *

She kills Fisk’s right hand man.

He grabs her outside her apartment, drugs her before she has a chance to pull her gun. She wakes up in a dingy warehouse, cold in spite of the summer heat outside.

James Wesley has all the slimy charm of the consummate businessman.

“You’re getting too close, Miss Page.” His conversational tone is jarring, like they’re discussing the stock market, or the weather. She thinks briefly of the Man in Black, but it seems he’s only nosy enough to tell her to drop her investigation, and not enough to keep her from getting killed. She can’t count on anyone else. She only has herself — same as always, at least since Kevin died.

Wesley tries to blackmail her into spying on Nelson & Murdock. Threatens everyone she loves, all of her friends. It’s a wasted effort: Fisk has already taken what was most important to her, and he didn’t stop there. She’s not going to work for him, no matter what it costs her.

Wesley is an overconfident moron. He leaves his gun on the table where she can reach it. He tries to bluff her out of using it on him.

She puts seven bullets in his chest.

* * *

It’s the DA who finally gives up the Punisher’s identity. Frank Castle, a former Force Recon Marine. Reyes won’t give Karen more than that.

It’s plenty.

It doesn’t help her find him, but it does give her a new case to investigate, trying to find out the origins of the brutal vigilante. A conspiracy, beginning with a man in a coma and a DNR order, and leading her to a house in the suburbs. The man in the photos is nothing like she imagined: smiling and handsome, kissing his wife, surrounded by a family that clearly adores him. There’s a warmth to him that’s at odds with what she knows of him as a cold-blooded killer.

She tries to find out what happened to his family, but there’s almost nothing. She corners the assistant DA and practically blackmails him into sharing what he knows. It turns out he’s a decent person, not like his boss, and she comes away with a treasure trove of information.

The Castle family are dead, collateral damage in a gang meetup turned massacre. Something doesn’t add up — they should be in the news, martyrs in the ongoing gang wars that have mired the city for months. But there’s nothing, just a tiny article a few days after the massacre that talks about a woman and two children killed in a drive by shooting.

She needs Frank Castle. She needs his skills to get her close enough to kill Fisk, but it’s more than that. She’s caught up in his mystery now, no longer interested in him only for her own aims. She needs his help, but she also wants answers for him. Maybe they can help each other.

* * *

The Devil finds him before she does, nearly dead at the hands of the Kitchen Irish, and turns him directly over to the police. She’s really starting to hold a grudge against the vigilante.

Matt shows up for work the next day for once, filled with a righteous fervor for justice, and insists they head over to the hospital to replace whatever hapless public defender has been assigned to Castle’s case. It’s the most present he’s been in months, and Karen tries to appreciate it. He flirts with her a little, and she tries to enjoy it, to reciprocate. A year ago it would have felt like the most important thing in the world. A year ago she could have gone home and called Kevin to gossip about it.

Foggy doesn’t want to represent a mass murderer, but Karen is more than a little curious about this one. None of the information she has on him seems to add up. The media sees a monster, but she’s been in his house, and she sees something else: a husband, a father, a man.

* * *

He hires them.

She’d like to think it’s because of the firm’s reputation, because Matt is passionate and Foggy is dedicated, and that’s what she’ll tell anyone who asks — but they all know it’s because of her. She broke into his house, which knocks him out of his apathy long enough to listen to her, and she gives a damn what happened to his family. That’s what clinches it; she knows, because she can relate. She’d do anything for someone who cared what happened to Kevin.

He blames himself for what happened to his family, and it’s like looking in a mirror. His grief is so much like her own that she wonders how this hospital room can contain it all.

* * *

Matt asks her out, and she says yes, desperate for some small taste of normal, desperate to feel anything that isn’t rage or grief or fear. He takes her to dinner and kisses her in the rain and it’s nice. He’s nice, and she tells herself that she should hold on to him. He’s kind and handsome and charming, everything she’s supposed to want.

So why does she feel so lonely when she’s with him?

* * *

Castle forces a trial that he never makes it to. He spends two weeks in the hospital, recovering from what the Irish did to him. Karen visits him to work on his defense strategy, to share anything new she’s found about his family. There isn’t much; a missing body that turns out to be an undercover cop, a new name whispered in dark corners of the city: the Blacksmith, the city’s newest drug supplier, shrouded in secrecy. No one knows who he is, no one has seen his face, but there are connections between the Blacksmith and the massacre at the carousel.

She likes Frank. He’s kind of an asshole, but he’s honest about it, and she finds that it’s a smokescreen for an innate decency, a deep capacity for love and fidelity. She spends as much time as she can spare with him over the two weeks leading up to his trial, and feels as though she knows him better than Matt or Foggy after an entire year of friendship and working closely together. She likes the way he listens to her, intent and serious, and the way he believes in her ability to find out the truth, and the way he challenges her.

The night the police transfer Castle to county lockup, he escapes. Karen calls Matt, and when he doesn’t answer, she goes to his apartment to check on him, and finds a stunningly gorgeous woman in his bed. He chases after her as she storms out, excuses and lies tumbling from his lips like water, and she rounds on him at the door.

“I’m done,” she says, and he must hear the finality in her voice, because he lets her go when she leaves.

* * *

She goes to the DA the next day, to try and wrest the truth from her duplicitous lips, and almost gets shot for her trouble. Reyes is completely losing her shit, certain that Frank is coming for her next now that he’s — _allegedly_ — taken care of the ME who covered up his family’s murder. Karen doesn’t think it was him, but she’s hardly going to argue with the DA about it at this point. Instead she presses the woman for the truth about the massacre in Central Park all those months ago.

It was supposed to be a sting to take out the Blacksmith, a sting that went horribly wrong. Reyes had made the call not to clear the park of civilians. She hadn’t wanted to tip off the gangs.

“It was a mistake,” Reyes says, fighting back tears, and Karen sees red.

“Frank Castle’s family being gunned down was not a mistake, it was a massacre,” she snarls.

Reyes’ face crumples, but she never gets a chance to respond. There’s an explosion of noise and debris and blood and Karen barely has time to throw herself to the floor. When the bullets stop she stays where she is for several long moments, shaking and relieved — she’s alive, and she came here alone so her friends are safe — and horrified because Reyes is a bloody mess lying in a pile on her desk.

The cops immediately decide Frank did it, open and shut, case closed — but she still doesn’t think he’s behind these particular murders, regardless of his conveniently timed escape from custody. The MO is similar to what happened to the Irish back in the spring, but something about it feels off. She doesn’t think Frank has been withholding information from her, which means he can’t know about Reyes’ involvement yet. Besides, she doesn’t think he’d have missed noticing her presence, and maybe she’s naïve but she doesn’t think he’d risk hurting her.

Matt shows up at the courthouse and she doesn’t have time to soothe his hurt feelings (how he can have hurt feelings when she’s the one who caught him with someone else is beyond her). She brushes him off, leaving him standing on the sidewalk while she follows a couple of uniforms to their waiting patrol car. She’s in police protective custody because they’ve decided Frank is killing everyone who worked on his case, and she’s going along with it for now because _someone_ killed Reyes.

* * *

There’s a sound in the hall and she goes for her gun.

It was a quiet sound, a sort of soft thump that could just have been someone kicking their foot idly against the baseboards, but she’s still jumpy from that afternoon. Neither of the officers in her police escort answers her quiet call. She stands there, staring at the door, waiting for death to walk through to claim her.

What she gets instead is Frank Castle.

“Frank?” She hates the slight quaver in her voice. She doesn’t lower her gun.

“I didn’t do it.” His voice is a soft growl and his eyes shift from her face to her gun and back again.

“Hands up,” she orders. She doesn’t know what to do. He’s a fugitive and a murderer but despite all logic and reason, she thinks she trusts him.

“Okay. Okay.” He does as he’s told and dammit, he’s making it hard _not_ to trust him. “I didn’t do it,” he says again.

His head jerks sharply and she looks where he’s looking and then he’s tackling her and her shout of surprise is lost in the hail of bullets ripping through her apartment.

* * *

They’re sitting in a diner and Karen is fighting a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’s slipped her police detail and is about to be an accessory to... whatever the hell Frank has planned. Whatever it is, he doesn’t seem particularly concerned about it.

He’s too busy flirting with the waitress and watching headlights slide by outside the big windows. They highlight the sharp planes of his face and slide over his itchy trigger finger, tapping lightly against the table. He asks her about her love life and argues that she should give Matt another chance. ( _Use two hands, and never let go_. She has a better idea for what to use her two hands for, and besides not having anything to do with Matt, it’s a lot more violent than any romance should be.) He drinks a ridiculous amount of black coffee and bares his soul to her and she’s honestly having a hard time keeping up with him.

He compliments her choice of sidearm.

“Maybe it’s not your first rodeo,” he says, those dark eyes that see everything intent on her. She stares right back. Let him see.

“Fisk killed my brother,” she says. “I’m going to kill him.” She couldn’t have said this to anyone else. Foggy would be horrified, Matt would be preachy.

Frank just looks at her, considering. The bruises from his run-in with the Irish are nearly gone, just traces under his eyes and one stubborn splotch on the sharp edge of his left cheekbone. It hits her suddenly that Frank is an attractive man, but she ruthlessly squashes the realization. Her recent experience with Matt has taught her that romance is clearly not for her, and even if it was, the Punisher isn’t likely to welcome her interest.

Frank looks at her so long that she starts to wonder if he was listening, or if maybe he’s too busy reading her mind and judging her taste in men. She’s about to repeat herself when he nods once, sharp and decisive.

“Okay,” he says. She waits for him to say something else, but he just takes a sip of his coffee and glances out the window again.

“I killed his second,” she blurts, hoping for more of a reaction.

He nods slowly, still thoughtfully studying her. “Good to know,” he finally says. His voice is soft, and there’s an intimacy to the moment that Karen hadn’t expected. He’s calm — no trace of shock or disgust shows on his face. She’s been holding her secrets in for so long that she thought there would be more fuss when she finally let them out. Although, come to think of it — she never actually thought she’d have anyone she could tell.

“I want you to help me find Fisk,” she finally says when it’s clear Frank has no judgment to dispense. He nods a few more times, his eyes darting around the diner before landing back on her.

“I’ve got some shit to deal with first. But okay.”

“Just like that?”

Frank smirks. “Yes, ma’am. Just like that.” His eyes dart to the windows as another set of headlights sweep past, and the smirk is replaced by a scowl. “You need to get everyone out now.”

Karen blinks at him, thrown by how quickly things are happening. “What? What’s going on?”

“Just a couple guys who are about to walk into a diner for the last time.”

Realization hits her. “Bait. You used me as _bait_.”

“You need to go now.” His expression is hard, but his voice is impossibly soft.

She gives him a hard look of her own and gets up without another word.

“Wait,” he says when she’s only made it a few steps. She looks over her shoulder at him. He’s taken off his ball cap and is running his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled. It makes him look incongruously boyish. “We’ll figure it out.” She’s surprised by the earnest intensity in his eyes, but after weeks of working with him, she probably shouldn’t be. She hesitates, prepared to leave without acknowledging him, but just when she’s about to turn around she finds herself nodding.

She gathers the waitress and kitchen staff, herds everyone out the emergency exit in the back. The waitress tries to get her to come with them, but she shakes her head, gently pushing her out the door and shutting it behind her. She finds a place to hide and then she listens.

It’s horrifying: muffled thuds and crunching glass and a wet sound that she thinks is a knife sliding through flesh. But she forces herself to listen. If she’s going to pursue this path with Frank, she can’t shy away from the messy parts. No matter how comfortable he is with killing, she won’t do him the disservice of using him to do her dirty work.

She can hear Frank questioning one of the men but she can’t make out what they’re saying, and then it’s silent and she crawls out of her hiding place and stands shaking in the doorway. Frank sees her and straightens up, breathing hard. There’s blood on his face and on his hands. She takes a quick look around at the destruction and meets his gaze without flinching.

“Tell the cops I coerced you,” he says. “I grabbed you from the hotel and used you as bait. It’s close enough to the truth that they won’t push too hard.”

“Frank—”

“You gotta stay away from me,” he says. “Just stay away ‘til it’s done.”

She looks around at the bodies and wreckage again, blood and broken glass everywhere, and swallows hard — but she nods. Some of the tension bleeds out of Frank and he nods back. Then he’s gone.

* * *

She’s in the back of Brett’s car when they feel the explosion. They’re stopped at a red light and there’s a roar like distant thunder and the car rocks as the ground shakes. Karen presses her face to the window, looking for the source, and she finds it in an orange glow and billowing column of smoke coming from the docks.

“No,” she whispers, her breath fogging the glass.

Brett has his emergency lights on and pulls an illegal U-turn. He glances at her in his rear view mirror a couple of times, but she ignores him and he doesn’t speak.

She waits all night for them to find Frank’s body, but the cops aren’t hopeful that there will _be_ a body — the explosion was that big. They pull several bodies out of the water, drag some from the surrounding fires once they burn out — but Frank’s body is never found. Somehow the lack of a corpse doesn’t give her hope for his survival. Brett sends her home sometime after dawn, and she’s so exhausted that she doesn’t know why she ends up at a hotel instead of her apartment. It takes her a solid minute of staring blankly at the uniform who drove her here to remember that her apartment is a crime scene. With Frank assumed dead, she’s no longer considered at risk, and they leave her at the front door.

Alone in her room, she collapses onto the bed. She feels numb. It never really occurred to her that Frank might die before he got his answers, that he might never be able to help her. She stares at the ceiling for a long time before passing out, and wakes in the early afternoon, groggy and disoriented. She has missed calls from Foggy and Matt, but she ignores them. Instead, she goes to the paper and lets Ellison talk her out of dropping Frank’s story. She doesn’t take much convincing — she hasn’t found all the answers, and she’s not ready to give up yet. It’s the least she can do for Frank’s memory.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a pause, and then Curtis sighs. “Just be careful, okay? And make her take it easy for a few days.” 
> 
> “Yeah, I’ll do my best, but that is not a woman who knows how to chill.” 
> 
> “Rude,” Karen says calmly, choosing that moment to enter. 
> 
> “Am I wrong?” 
> 
> She sighs. “Not really. You’re just an asshole.”

She’s driving down a dark country road with the Blacksmith in her passenger seat. A song on the radio gives her hope that she’s not alone, but it’s scant comfort with a gun aimed at her head, the hand holding it unnervingly steady despite the bumpy road.

He doesn’t see the headlights. Frank’s former CO is too busy watching Karen’s every move to look over his shoulder and anticipate the impact. Karen uses the last moments before collision to try and relax her body, to absorb the hit and bounce back. She closes her eyes and breathes and doesn’t see the shock on Schoonover’s face when the truck T-bones them.

The crash seems to last an eternity of ripping metal and breaking glass and Karen doesn’t know which way is up until suddenly everything is quiet and still. The Blacksmith is silent, knocked out or dead, she doesn’t know which. She’s not sure she cares, as long as he doesn’t wake up before she gets out of this car.

She struggles out of her seatbelt and shoves open her door and tumbles out of the car — straight into Frank’s arms.

“Oh,” she says, clutching at him while she tries to get her feet under her.

“I gotcha.” His voice is a low rumble under her hand on his chest, and he holds her steady for several long moments, long enough for her to stand on her own power.

“You’re alive.” She can’t quite hide the relief in her voice.

“So are you.”

She rolls her eyes and hisses at the blooming headache that triggers. Frank looks her over, his hand surprisingly gentle on her jaw as he looks into her eyes, and then he lets her go.

“I gotta take out the trash.”

He makes it a few steps before she calls out.

“Wait.” He pauses, looking back at her, and she tries to get her sluggish thoughts into some semblance of order. “I think there’s more than him. You should question him before you kill him.” She’s a little shocked at how easily she condones this man’s death, but she knows in her bones that Schoonover is a monster, in a way that Frank, for all his body count and meat hooks and ruthlessness, is not. Maybe the Karen of a year ago would have reacted differently, but she’s not that woman anymore.

Frank nods once and tosses her his keys and she somehow manages to catch them despite feeling like she’s some terrible combination of drunk and high. He circles around to the other side of the wreck and drags a groaning Schoonover from the front seat. Karen briefly considers following them, but she feels like shit and she thinks witnessing three murders might be enough for one week, so she gets in Frank’s truck and starts the engine. She’s starting to shiver, shock taking over, so she cranks the heat and shrugs into Frank’s discarded jacket that’s in a pile beside her on the bench seat. It smells like him and she doesn’t think too hard about why she finds that comforting.

The rumble of the engine isn’t quite loud enough to cover the single gunshot that echoes out over the forest, but Karen doesn’t flinch. She breathes a little easier, knowing the world is rid of one more monster.

Frank doesn’t come back to the truck for a long time, long enough that Karen warms up and starts to nod off. She startles out of her doze to the sound of metal clanking on metal and the truck rocking slightly beneath her. Frank is loading something heavy into the bed of the pickup — she can’t get a good look in the dark, but she’s pretty sure it’s an arsenal. Leave it to Frank to find a weapons cache in the middle of the forest. He makes a couple trips before finally pulling the cover down over the bed of the truck and joining her in the cab.

“You okay, ma’am?”

She nods, shifting stiffly in her seat. “What did he say?”

Frank studies her for a moment and shifts the truck into gear. “You were right. He’s just the beginning,” he says, carefully steering around what’s left of her car. She feels a pang at the loss of it — not because she was particularly attached to the car, but because it was Ben’s. “We can talk about it in the morning,” Frank continues.

“Okay,” she says, too tired to press him. He makes her call the cops to report her car stolen, and she promises the desk sergeant that she’ll come in to fill out the paperwork in the morning.

* * *

She wakes up when the engine turns off, disoriented and painfully stiff. She shifts and tries to sit up, and a groan escapes her.

“Hey, take it easy,” says a voice like honeyed gravel.

“Frank?” She pries her eyes open with an effort, groaning again because the harsh glare of a street lamp sends a sharp pain knifing through her head.

“Don’t try to move.” She does as he says, mostly because everything hurts and moving sounds like a terrible idea right now. The driver’s side door opens and shuts, followed by her own door opening.

“C’mere,” Frank says, reaching in to unbuckle her seatbelt and help her out of her seat.

“Next time, just let the drug lord shoot me,” she mutters, leaning hard against Frank’s solid strength. She means it as a joke, but he goes unnaturally still and she glances up at him.

“No, ma’am,” he says, face set in implacable lines, and she stares at him for a long moment.

“Where are we?” She finally asks, clearing her throat. He gestures over his shoulder at an apartment building.

“Old buddy of mine from the Corps,” he mutters. “He’s a medic. Best I could do, considering.”

Considering that, even assumed dead, it would be stupid for him to walk into a hospital. Karen just nods and heads for the door. Her muscles are loosening up the more she moves, but she can feel dried blood flaking off her forehead and she has a pounding headache. Letting a medical professional look at her is probably the least stupid idea she’s had this evening.

Frank presses all the intercom buttons until he finds one that buzzes them in without asking questions. He half-drags her up to the sixth floor and knocks on the door of 6B. He seems to tense up as they wait, and then the door opens, and a tall black man wearing a tshirt and gym shorts that reveal a prosthetic leg is gesturing for them to enter.

“Inside,” he says.

It’s a nice apartment, not very big, but comfortably furnished. Frank makes introductions and he sits Karen down in a kitchen chair while Curtis goes for his med kit.

“I’m probably fine,” she says, and he scowls down at her. Curtis returns with his kit, but Frank is too busy glaring at Karen to notice until Curt gently pushes him to one side. Karen drags another kitchen chair next to hers and pats the seat. “You should get checked, too, then. It’s not like I’m the only one who was in a car wreck tonight.”

Frank grumbles but eventually sits down and submits to Curtis’s ministrations. He keeps throwing Karen pointed looks and she just rolls her eyes. Curtis shortly pronounces them both “more or less fine.”

“That your professional opinion?” Frank asks sarcastically, and Curtis rolls his eyes.

“My professional opinion is that you should have your license taken away,” he says, and Frank laughs and lets his friend finish patching them up.

Curtis is gentle and his eyes are kind as he cleans the cut on her forehead and closes it up with a few neat stitches.

“Can I use your bathroom?” She asks when he’s done, and he gestures over his shoulder with a nod.

When she comes back, she can hear them arguing and she pauses in the hall just out of sight to eavesdrop.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Curtis is saying. “If you’d come to me sooner, I would’ve helped.”

“Didn’t want to drag you down with me, Curt.”

“But it’s okay to drag that woman down with you instead?”

“It’s not like that,” Frank growls. There’s a pause, and when he speaks again his voice is softer. “She helped me remember. She helped me find the truth. So now I’m going to help her. I owe her that much, at least. Probably more.”

There’s a pause, and then Curtis sighs. “Just be careful, okay? And make her take it easy for a few days.”

“Yeah, I’ll do my best, but that is not a woman who knows how to chill.”

“Rude,” Karen says calmly, choosing that moment to enter.

“Am I wrong?”

She sighs. “Not really. You’re just an asshole.”

That earns her a laugh from Curtis and a smirk from Frank.

* * *

He takes her home with him when they leave Curtis’s apartment. Home for Frank Castle is a surprisingly spacious loft in a converted warehouse near the docks. Though, the spaciousness is at least partly an illusion — he has almost no furniture to fill it up. The main living space has a couch with a couple of ammo crates for a coffee table (complete with coffee rings staining the tops) and a tiny table with two rickety chairs straddling the line between the living room and kitchen. There are gun cases and ammo crates stacked all over the place, and one wall is covered in a dizzying array of sticky notes and photographs. His conspiracy theory murder wall rivals anything she put together with the law firm. She’s almost jealous. A staircase at the far end leads up to a lofted hallway with two bedrooms and a bathroom off of it.

The kitchen is the most lived-in-looking part of the apartment. There’s a coffee maker that’s more complicated than most cars and a stand mixer and a blender on the counter. A couple of stools are tucked under the breakfast bar, and when Frank opens the fridge to grab a couple beers Karen catches a glimpse of shelves covered with colorful jars and bottles and a crisper drawer overflowing with fresh produce.

“You can take the bedroom,” Frank says, nodding up the stairs.

“Why’d you bring me here?” She hasn’t moved from the entryway, but she accepts the beer Frank offers her. He shrugs, looking a little embarrassed.

“Figured you’d need a place to stay,” he mumbles.

“My apartment...” Karen trails off, because her apartment is unlivable right now. And also is a sealed crime scene.

“Ma’am, your apartment is holier than the Vatican on Easter,” Frank says, and she cracks a smile. “I’ve got space, you can stay here until you find another apartment. No reason to pay for a hotel.” He’s blushing, his finger tapping against his thigh, and Karen decides to let him off the hook — it’s not like she has a lot of other options, anyway, and she doubts the cops were planning on paying for the hotel room.

“Thanks.”

He nods. “You can come in, you know.”

Karen rolls her eyes, but she does move out of the entryway.

“You hungry? I’ll make you an omelet.”

Right on cue, her stomach growls. “That’d be great, thanks.” She slides onto one of the stools and watches as Frank moves around the kitchen, pulling eggs, cheese, ham, butter, and veggies from the fridge and a pan from a cabinet. It’s surprisingly domestic, though she isn’t sure why she’s surprised. Frank was a family man — surely he must have done this sort of thing for his wife and kids.

He feeds her and gives her a tshirt and shorts to change into and insists on sleeping on the couch so she can take the bedroom. She’s too tired to argue with him, so she just nods and locks herself in the bathroom and showers until she feels almost human again. The bedrooms are even more spartan than the rest of the place. One is completely empty, and the other holds a mattress on the floor, made up with military precision. Another ammo crate has been pressed into service as a bedside table, a lamp and what she assumes is a loaded gun atop it, along with the photo she took from Frank’s house.

She leaves the door open so she can hear Frank snoring on the couch downstairs, and sleeps like the dead.

* * *

Her apartment is, indeed, holier than a rusty sieve. The lock was lost to the barrage, so they shove the door open and duck under the crime scene tape. There’s debris everywhere, but her closet and kitchen both escaped mostly unscathed. She gathers up her mother’s china, a few boxes of clothes and shoes, her jewelry, Kevin’s favorite baseball cap. Frank hauls it all out to his truck for her.

All her furniture is toast, her funky knick knacks shattered, her collection of used books a pulpy mess. She sighs, but it’s just stuff. Somehow most of her precious items have made it — everything else can be replaced. They swing by a mattress store and get her a bed, and then they haul everything up to Frank’s loft.

* * *

It’s supposed to be temporary, but living with Frank is surprisingly easy. She bullies him into getting some actual furniture (a kitchen table and chairs that aren’t in danger of falling apart if you look at them wrong, an actual bed frame, a couch that didn’t come off a street corner on trash day), and he cajoles her into eating better (this consists mostly of him throwing away her takeout menus when he thinks she’s not looking and attempting to teach her to cook), and they work on their respective investigations together. The patch of wall that made up Frank’s murder board grows in fits and starts until it’s nearly doubled in size. They go to the firing range together at least once a week and spend quiet evenings watching tv or cleaning their guns.

She gets a few pieces of furniture for the room she’s using: a set of bookshelves, a second-hand desk and mismatched chair for her laptop. She doesn’t get much more than that, figuring the less she accumulates now, the less she’ll have to move later. She promises to find a new place soon so she’ll be out of his hair, and Frank waves her off, clearly unconcerned about the situation.

* * *

She quits the law firm. She hasn’t been in for days anyway, so she makes it official. Foggy sighs when she tells him, but he doesn’t try to argue her out of it.

“We’re going under, anyway,” he says. “Can’t pay the bills with casseroles and produce.” He gets a job at a swanky firm in Midtown, and Karen takes it as permission to stop worrying about him so much. She still sees him for drinks at Josie’s regularly, and Matt joins them when he can be bothered to show up. She still doesn’t know what’s going on with him, but he isn’t telling and she’s done trying to pry it out of him. Somehow he knows she’s spending time with a man but she won’t give him any more details than that she has a new roommate since her apartment was destroyed. She doesn’t want to explain about Frank — she’s not sure she _can_ explain about Frank. She trusts him with her life but he’s also killed a lot of people and most people are going to have a problem with that.

Frank doesn’t stop punishing, but his activities slow down significantly now that most of the people responsible for his family’s murders are dead. He’s also trying to stay off the cops’ radar — now that they think he’s dead, he’d like to keep it that way. He starts working a construction job to help pay the bills — now that he’s punishing less, he’s not bringing in as much cash from the gangsters he kills. His beard is coming in nicely, hiding his face and making his dark eyes look even darker. Karen starts working at the paper full time, and he brings her tips when he can. Ellison keeps pestering her to tell him who her source is, but she always just smiles and changes the subject. She doesn’t think Ellison would be thrilled to find out her source’s identity, and he’d be horrified to learn that she’s living with a mass murderer.

* * *

Foggy’s name lights up her phone screen and she feels a twinge of guilt that she hasn’t made more of an effort to keep in touch. The guilt is forgotten when she hears what he has to say.

Fisk is going to prison.

“What?” Her voice is a rasp of shock and fury but Foggy is too excited to notice.

He’s been working with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in a delicate back and forth of information given and received, and his new law firm has brokered an agreement between Fisk and the DA’s office that gets Fisk off the streets but keeps him out of supermax. In return, the crime boss is flipping on a few of his fellow gang leaders. She’s so stunned that she barely manages to make the appropriate congratulatory noises for Foggy.

The reality is that it’s the worst news she’s had since Kevin and Ben died. Her months of work, of chasing down leads and partnering with Frank,have all been obliterated with a single phone call. She promises to meet up with Foggy and his girlfriend later that week to celebrate, even though celebrating is the farthest thing from her mind right now.

Frank finds her on the couch when he gets home from his day job a couple hours later, staring emptily at their murder wall. She’s not sure what her expression is, but it must be bad because Frank takes one look at her and crosses the room in a flash.

“What happened?” He demands, kneeling down at her feet. His palpable worry sends her over the edge from numb to near-hysterical, and she’s unable to stifle the sob that claws its way up her throat. Frank is beginning to look truly alarmed, but he tugs lightly on her until she tips forward into his arms. He holds on tight while she cries, rubbing circles into her back and smoothing his fingers through her hair.

“F-Fisk is going to prison,” she gasps between sobs. He freezes for a moment, but then his hand resumes its soothing circuit. She feels him relax a little against her, returning from his ready-for-anything stance to his usual baseline level of guardedness. He lets her cry herself out, making soothing noises until she calms down.

It’s the first time she’s really properly cried since Kevin died. Even Ben’s death had only earned a few sad tears, but nothing has shaken her enough to break through her mental fortress of rage and vengeance to let her truly grieve. Now she’s grieving not only the loss of her brother, but the loss of her chance at avenging his death, too.

Eventually, though, the wave of grief ebbs. She has to fight off the sudden urge to remain hidden in the safety of Frank’s arms. Frank, for his part, seems perfectly content to remain where they are for the rest of the year, though his knees have to be killing him. It’s this banal thought that finally brings Karen to pull away. She forces her hands to unclench, unconsciously smoothing out the back of Frank’s shirt where she’s crushed it, and slumps, exhausted, back into the couch.

“How’d you find out?”

She laughs humorlessly. “Foggy called to tell me. He thought I’d be thrilled.”

It’s hard to meet Frank’s steady gaze, but when she does, all she finds is understanding and empathy. He gets it, without her having to explain, and she looks away again, overwhelmed. She scrubs at her eyes, trying to regain her composure, but she feels wrung out.

“This the first time you’ve cried?”

She looks up sharply. How does he _do_ that? He smirks a little and levers himself up off the floor, joints popping in protest. He pulls her up, too, and presses a soft kiss to her cheek that kind of makes her want to cry all over again for its sweetness.

“I’ve been there,” is all he says.

They have a quiet night in after that. Frank cooks dinner, like usual, and he carefully steers the conversation away from their investigations. Karen pretends not to notice what he’s doing, but she deeply appreciates the effort. He gives her simple tasks to distract her, chopping onions or stirring the sauce while it simmers, and she applies herself to them with laser-like focus. They watch a movie on the couch after dinner, and if she sits a little closer to Frank than she normally would, they both pretend not to notice.

* * *

Matt dies. _Dies_ , without her ever finding out what the hell was going on with him, why he was always covered in bruises, why he had a gorgeous, half-naked brunette in his bed when he was supposed to be winning court cases with her. She feels — so many things. Heartbroken for what they could have been, furious at all his obvious lies (even if she never knew what they were about), confused and betrayed and, in a way, horribly relieved, because now none of that is her problem. He’s dead and in a way it’s almost freeing.

She goes to church for the first time in years. She wasn’t raised Catholic, but she figures it’s all close enough. She goes to his favorite church and sits in a pew for hours and hours, staring at the crucifix hanging over the altar and trying to find some kind of peace, but all she finds is that pews are really uncomfortable and her ass falls asleep.

She’s not sure why she came, anyway. Churches aren’t for peace. They’re for guilt and confession and atonement.

She has enough of all that inside her head.

* * *

With Fisk firmly out of reach, Karen throws herself into journalism with a singleminded intensity that has Ellison sneaking concerned glances when he thinks she’s not looking. With Ben gone, her crotchety editor shoulders the mantle of mentoring her. Her days are varied, with time being split between arguing with Ellison in the office, chasing down leads across the city, and late-night writing sessions at the little desk in her bedroom at Frank’s place.

Over the next few months, she breaks story after story: political corruption and human trafficking rings, embezzlement schemes and insurance fraud. In a surprisingly short time, she starts to feel like she’s earned her place in Ben’s old office. She likes to think he would be proud of her, though she still hasn’t shaken her guilt over his death, and sometimes she still feels like a fraud, playing pretend at journalism. On the nights when it gets bad, when she can’t sleep without nightmares about Kevin or Ben waking her, she turns to exercise. She starts small, just doing push-ups or sit-ups until she’s tired enough to fall into an exhausted sleep. For a while, it’s enough.

* * *

Karen never actually gets around to finding a new apartment. By the time she has her feet under her at her new job and can afford to move, she and Frank have gotten comfortable with their arrangement. She half-heartedly searches the local listings, but when she mentions to Frank that she can’t find anything bigger than a walk-in closet in her price range, he rolls his eyes and tells her not to bother.

“You’re not bothering me,” he says, eyes sliding away from hers like they always do when he’s revealing a part of himself. “You don’t have to move out.”

She suddenly finds she can’t really meet his gaze either. “Thanks,” she mumbles, fiddling with her hair in the hopes Frank won’t notice that she’s blushing. She deletes the apartment hunting app from her phone that night.

* * *

Frank catches her doing sit-ups in the dark one night, and when she stumbles through an embarrassed explanation of her insomnia, he just nods and tells her to wake him next time it happens. She almost doesn’t take him at his word, but a week later she has a really bad night. When she wakes, gasping, for the third time that night, she decides he wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it and goes to knock on his door.

Frank takes one look at her face and nods. “Put some workout clothes on and meet me downstairs,” is all he says.

Five minutes later, she’s following him out of their apartment building. The nights are cold now, and she can hear sirens in the distance, but their block is quiet. They walk for a few minutes before Frank stops at a door and unlocks it, gesturing her inside.

It’s a gym, dark at this time of night save for a few emergency lights. She looks around while Frank locks the door and flips on some lights, leaving about half unlit so the place feels almost cozy. There are weight machines and punching bags around the room, and a boxing ring in one corner. Mirrors line one wall, the others covered with posters and memorabilia.

“What is this place?”

“Did a favor for the owner a while back,” Frank says. “Lets me use the place after hours.” She waits for him to go on, but that seems to be all he’s saying.

“It must’ve been a pretty big favor.”

Frank just shrugs.

“C’mere.” He gestures for her to follow him, leading her to an open space with thick mats covering the floor. He shrugs out of his coat on the way and she follows suit, piling hers on top of his on one of the weight machines. He comes to a stop in the center of the mat and turns to face her. She stops a few steps away, curious. He does this sometimes, leading her to an activity without explanation. Usually, it involves an impromptu cooking lesson, despite the fact that Karen burns almost everything she attempts to cook (he’s determined to teach her how to cook _something_ , but so far the only things she’s mastered are her grandmother’s lasagna — none of Frank’s doing — and chopping whatever vegetables Frank needs for his next concoction). She waits for him to begin whatever instruction he’s planned.

“Hit me,” Frank says.

“What?”

Frank gives her a look. “You heard me,” he says, gesturing her to come closer. “Come on, Karen, hit me. Let me see what you’ve got.” He doesn’t change his stance, doesn’t make his hands into fists or put his arms up in preparation to block her. He just stands there, no more tense than he normally is, trigger finger tapping slowly against his thumb, dark eyes watching her expectantly.

She watches him back, trying to decide how serious he is. There’s absolutely no humor in his eyes, so she decides she might as well do it. She rolls her shoulders a couple times, stretches her neck one way and then the other, and launches into a solid punch without warning. Frank blocks it easily, but she’s already following up with a left hook that nearly catches him by surprise, her fist getting close enough to his face that his beard tickles her knuckles. His eyes light with a spark of approval even as he’s locking her arms in a hold between them, pulling her forward. She tugs ineffectually against his grip, glaring when he grins at her, and knees him in the stomach.

She lands a surprisingly solid blow. Frank’s grin turns to surprise as all the air rushes out of him and he stumbles backward, falling to the mats. Unfortunately, his shock doesn’t loosen his hold, and he pulls Karen down with him.

“Oof,” she says, landing on top of him. Frank finally frees her arms, and she pushes herself onto her elbows to look down at him in exasperation. He’s grinning at her with obvious pride.

“Should’ve known you’d be scrappier than you look.”

“It was a game Kevin and I used to play,” she says softly, smiling. “He was always jumping me, pretending to be an attacker so I’d be ready for anything.” She closes her eyes, remembering. “He always worried about me like that, even though he was younger. He knew what kind of world we live in.”

When she opens her eyes again, Frank’s grin has faded to something softer and his eyes are dark with compassion. She stares wordlessly back, caught up in her memories and the warmth of Frank’s understanding, and it’s a long moment before she realizes she’s still sprawled on top of him. His hands are warm on her waist and her hair is falling in a golden curtain around them, blocking out the empty gym and the city beyond, narrowing the world to the safe little bubble they’ve created. It feels good and right and she almost feels like she could stay there forever.

“Karen—“

Her breath catches and suddenly she’s terrified of whatever Frank is about to say.

“Right, sorry,” she mutters, shoving to her feet in a deliberate misinterpretation of the way he said her name, and she catches the flash of bewilderment in his eyes even though he quickly smothers it. She flinches at the way his expression closes, so to soften her abruptness, she offers him her hand to help him up, and is inordinately grateful when he accepts the tiny peace offering after only the barest of pauses.

“Come on, let’s spar,” he says. His voice is gruff but he seems otherwise his usual stoic self, and Karen jumps at the chance to pretend like nothing just happened between them. They spend the next hour throwing punches and knocking each other down, and Karen soaks up Frank’s brusque coaching like a sponge.

When they finally return to the apartment around two in the morning, she gives Frank an impulsive hug in thanks, which he carefully returns, one arm strong around her back and his breath soft in her ear. Then she goes up to bed and collapses into an exhausted, dreamless sleep, still warm from his embrace.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is Donny going to be okay?” She asks quietly. He looks sharply at her. 
> 
> “How’d you know it was Donny?”
> 
> “He’s the only one you ever refer to as a kid,” she shrugs. “Everyone else is a jackass or just a guy.”

Frank hasn’t killed anyone in months, which is maybe why Karen is so freaked out when he comes home covered in blood one night.

“Holy shit.” She stares at him from her spot on the couch, taking in the darker stains on his dark clothes, and the way his eyes are like hollow pits. He looks more like the skull on his vest than ever before. It’s a stark contrast to how _well_ he’s been the last few months — she hadn’t realized how healthy and relaxed he was, until now he’s really, really not.

“I’m okay,” he mumbles, and it breaks through her shock to propel her off the couch.

“You’re _not_ ,” she retorts, outraged, and crosses the room in a few long strides. “What happened?” She doesn’t wait for his answer to start peeling off his bloody jacket, her hands gentle in case any of the blood is his. She doesn’t want to hurt him.

He doesn’t answer immediately and she glances up to find him frowning at her, not angry but... perplexed?

“Karen, I’m okay,” he says again, more firmly this time, and the frown melts into something warmer, an almost-smile that brightens his eyes and softens the stark expression that had her so worried.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she grumbles, turning back to her examination of his clothes and body. His jacket is in a pile on the floor and she pulls gently at his shirt, checking for tears and lifting it to make sure there are no stab wounds hiding under it.

“See? No holes.”

She rolls her eyes. There are plenty of fresh bruises, but he’s right, there don’t appear to be any holes. Her heart rate finally slips out of heart attack range, and she reluctantly lets go of Frank to go wash the blood off her hands.

“You still haven’t told me what happened.”

He gives her a look like he’s contemplating just not telling her, but then he sighs. “Kid at work got in over his head.” He strips off his shirt, dumps it on top of his discarded jacket, and starts untying his boots. It’s not the first time she’s seen Frank shirtless, but she still finds herself fighting a blush at the sight of all that toned muscle on display. She always has a hard time not staring at his scars, trying to figure out their causes and backstories, resisting the urge to run her fingers across them. “It was that group of assholes I told you about, roped him into some dumb scheme to knock over a mob poker game. He’s lucky I left my thermos on site and had to go back for it, or he’d be dead.”

By now her hands are clean and Frank is down to his boxers, all his clothes in a pile, ready for the wash. He gathers them up along with his boots and heads for the washer, setting his boots in the sink on his way past. Karen trails after him and leans against the dryer while he’s starting his load of laundry.

“Is Donny going to be okay?” She asks quietly. He looks sharply at her.

“How’d you know it was Donny?”

“He’s the only one you ever refer to as a kid,” she shrugs. “Everyone else is a jackass or just a guy.”

Frank snorts but doesn’t dispute it. “He’ll be fine. Assholes he was working with are dead, and so are the mobsters, so he shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Told him to use his head next time since I wasn’t likely to be there to bail him out.”

He sounds annoyed, but she can tell he’s glad he was there to help.

“Course, now I gotta find a new job.” Frank grimaces as he starts the machine.

Karen fights a smile at the mental image of Frank wearing a suit jacket and tie over his Punisher vest at an interview.

She writes about the mobsters that night, _5 Dead, Little Italy Murder-Suicide_. She listens to her police scanner (well, it’s Frank’s, technically) until the call comes through about the five dead Italians, and makes a few calls to her sources in the 15th precinct. One of them wants to know how she knows so much when they’re barely on the scene.

“Anonymous source,” she says blithely. She can practically hear his eyes roll through the phone.

She finishes her article, leaving out the fact it’s connected to the three murders at a nearby construction site. If the cops haven’t figured that out on their own then she certainly isn’t going to help them. She sends it to print, gnawing on her lip the whole time because she has a bad feeling about the whole situation. Frank told her he was careful to cover his tracks, but she still worries about his cover getting blown.

Ellison sends a snarky email back, giving her a hard time for always getting the scoop way before any of the other crime writers. He’s teasing, she can tell, and besides, she’s hardly going to apologize for having excellent sources. His email is closed with a rare ‘good work,’ and she tries to let her pride at the compliment ease her anxiety.

* * *

Matt comes back from the dead and Foggy is freaked out but also thrilled. He comes to Karen to let her know and she tries to be happy but she’s just furious. It’s been months and she was just starting to come to terms with his death and now it was all a lie.

She’s so sick of the lies.

Matt won’t even tell her what happened, why he disappeared. It feels like the final insult on top of all the injuries, the lies and the secrets, and Karen is just done. He stops by her office to say hi but when he won’t really talk to her she blows him off and goes out to meet a source instead. She wants to call Frank, but he told her he was going to spend the day job hunting and she doesn’t want to bother him in case he’s in an interview.

* * *

She gets home a little later than usual that evening, blowing into the apartment with an apology on her lips and expecting to be greeted by the scent of something delicious being prepared for dinner. Frank is a creature of habit and likes to start cooking at the same time every evening, and she does her best to be home in time to help. She might suck at cooking, but she’s his self-appointed sous chef, and she takes her duties seriously.

“Sorry I’m late, I got caught up arguing with Ell—“ she’s halfway out of her coat before she realizes all the lights are off and nothing is sizzling on the stove.

“Frank?” It’s eerily silent, like Frank hasn’t been home in hours. She checks upstairs, just to be sure, but his bedroom door is open, his military-neat bed undisturbed since he made it that morning.

She’s not worried, exactly, but this is weird enough that she’s starting to be a little concerned. It belatedly occurs to her to check her phone in case he texted her, but all she finds are six straight messages from Foggy (he’s a multi-texter) about their next planned Josie’s night and a single message from Matt that just says ‘Hi.’ That one gets an eye roll, but she ignores them all and calls Frank.

“ _I’m sorry, the number you have called has been disconnected._ ”

 _Now_ she’s worried. If Frank went to the trouble of destroying his burner, then something bad has happened and he’s in the wind. She knows from experience how good he is at hiding when he doesn’t want to be found.

* * *

Curtis hasn’t heard from him either.

* * *

The apartment feels cold and empty and she tells herself to stop being so dramatic but she kind of wants to cry. He isn’t there when she gets up the next morning. He’s just gone and she doesn’t know what to _do_. This is worse than when Matt died, because Matt’s death didn’t leave her so alone. She had Frank, she had Foggy. Even Ellison was there for her, in his grumpy, brusque way. But no one else knows about Frank, so she can’t lean on Foggy or Ellison the way she could when Matt died. She can only prop herself up as best she can and hope that Frank is okay.

She goes to work and tries to act normal but for once none of her investigations are holding her interest. There’s only one investigation she wants to conduct, but she’s afraid to actively look for him in case she blows his cover. It occurs to her that he could be worse than missing but she immediately shoves the thought away as untenable. An hour after lunch she finally admits she isn’t going to get anything done that day and tells Ellison she needs to take some personal time.

“Take a nap, you look like hell,” he calls after her.

* * *

“Say, lady, I’m real hungry, you got any change?”

Karen whips around, heart surging at the familiar growl of Frank’s voice even as she tells herself not to get her hopes up — but it is, it’s Frank, he’s right there and he’s not dead and he’s... dressed as a homeless person.

“Hey, Karen,” he mumbles, smiling a little, and she’s so relieved that she takes a step toward him before it occurs to her that she can’t hug him in case they’re being watched. To cover the aborted movement, she digs in her purse for her wallet and pulls out a couple bills.

“Are you okay?”

Frank’s fingers brush hers as she hands him the money, and he doesn’t answer her question. He keeps breaking eye contact to scan the sidewalk and street behind her.

“You still got that hand cannon?” He asks instead, and that tells her just how freaked out he is. He _knows_ she’s always armed, which means he’s not really asking so much as warning her to be ready to use it.

“You better believe it.” She pats her bag reassuringly and he looks at her again.

“Atta girl,” he says softly, dark eyes steady on hers for the first time since he reappeared, and she feels warm all over.

He glances around once more, and instead of making her nervous, it grounds her. She’s safe, because Frank is watching her back.

“Can we talk?”

She tips her head towards a nearby diner she likes and he nods, standing up and stepping around her so his familiar bulk is between her and the road.

The diner is quiet at this time of the afternoon, too late for the lunch crowd but still far too early for even the earliest of early birds. They find a booth in the back and Frank sets his bag on the bench before sliding in. The waitress comes by with coffee and Karen waits until she’s back behind the counter before leaning over the table to fix Frank with a pointed look.

“What is going on?”

He shifts in his seat, scratching at his beard. “I got made.”

“How?”

Frank makes a face halfway between a grimace and a smirk. “Said he just waited for a bunch of bodies to drop and started there.”

“You spoke to him? Did you see his face?” She’s already flipping her notebook open, scribbling notes on the first blank page she finds. _Male_ , she writes. _Knows Frank’s MO._

“Just from a distance,” Frank shakes his head. “He’s smart, trained — some kind of spook, CIA, I don’t know. All I’ve got is his code name.”

She writes down _SPY?_ and then _code name_ before looking back up at Frank.

“Micro,” he says, and she scribbles that down, too. He rummages around in his bag and pulls out a pot of white roses which he sets on the table between them.

“You brought me flowers?”

“I’m an old fashioned kind of guy,” he mutters. She expects him to smirk, but instead he just looks embarrassed and worried. “No phone until I figure this shit out, so I figured you could put them in the window when you have something; I’ll meet you.”

“You’re not coming home.” It’s not a question, but he answers it anyway.

“Not until I figure this out. I don’t want this guy anywhere near you.” His voice is a growl but it doesn’t hide his distress from her. It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him she can take care of herself — just like she’s been telling Foggy and Matt (and Kevin and Ben and Ellison) — but she stops. Whoever Micro is, he has Frank spooked in a way Karen has never seen before. He’s scared for her safety, yes — but he’s also just scared. She knows what that’s like, and she can’t bring herself to tell him not to worry about her.

“Where’s our rendezvous, then?”

He gives her the details, zipping up his bag while he talks, adjusting his hat and pulling his hood back up to cover his head. He stands to go and fuck, she can’t let him just _go_ , not after everything, and she’s up out of her seat, throwing her arms around him before he can walk away.

“Hey,” he says, catching her. It takes him a moment, but he leans into her. Just a little, just for a moment — but it’s enough.

“You scared the hell out of me,” she mutters as she pulls away, a little embarrassed. Frank’s hand lingers on her waist and he mumbles something unintelligible — maybe an apology, maybe her name, she can’t tell — as he adjusts his bag on his shoulder.

“Be careful,” he says as he steps around her, and she nods, her throat closing. She doesn’t watch him go.

* * *

It takes her a few days to track down Micro — or what’s left of him, since he died nearly a year ago.

It’s sad, what she finds. A wife left without answers, two kids left without their father. Micro’s real name is David Lieberman, and other than his job as an analyst for the NSA, he looks, at least on paper, like the epitome of a nice, normal guy. He had a steady job, a happy family — until he allegedly committed treason and was executed for his sins.

She wonders if journalistic storytelling has finally gone to her head or if the symmetry really is that obvious: Frank surviving without his family, this family surviving without David. The kids are even the right ages.

She runs home at lunch to put the roses out on the windowsill. She’s still a little bemused that Frank has such a romantic notion of clandestine communications.

The rest of the afternoon passes agonizingly slowly. She ignores another text from Matt (“Hey,” this time, like using a different greeting will get her to respond), and manages to finish the stupid fluff piece Ellison assigned her with only a few muttered curses. She leaves the office in the late afternoon, and takes a cab across the river into Queens.

Their secret rendezvous point (she feels ridiculous even thinking the words) is a park on the water, looking over the East River to the city. She picks a bench and waits, for once not scribbling in her notebook or fiddling around on her phone. It’s kind of quiet, and there are only a few joggers and one dog walker passing through.

Frank shows up right on time, and she doesn’t even need to turn her head to know he’s there. She can feel herself relaxing, her shoulders dropping a little as her lips curve into a soft smile that she tries to hide. He drops onto the bench next to her, close enough that she can feel his warmth despite the chill coming off the water.

“That was fast,” he mutters. She smirks.

“Next time, try and find me a real challenge,” she jokes. She pulls the slip of paper with her summarized notes out of her purse and hesitates only a moment before handing it to him.

“Something wrong?”

She gnaws on her lip for a moment, considering her answer. “It just... feels like I’m signing someone’s death warrant,” she finally admits. She’s been talking about killing Fisk for months now, but this feels different. Micro isn’t dead, but he’s let his family believe he is for nearly a year. He must have a good reason for it, and for scaring the hell out of Frank. She doesn’t know if he deserves to die the way she knows Fisk does, deep in her bones.

Frank’s jaw clenches, but he nods seriously. He doesn’t dismiss her concern. It’s one of the things she likes about him: he listens to her and takes her feelings seriously. He takes everything about her seriously, and it goes straight to her head, and deeper, worming through the cracks in the walls she’s built to protect her heart. “Look,” he says, his eyes flicking out over the water before returning to her and holding her gaze, all that intensity focused on her, “as long as he didn’t have a hand in what happened to my family, he’s got nothing to fear from me.”

She frowns worriedly back, searching his expression, and eventually nods when he doesn’t waver. “Just... when am I going to see you?” The question slips out before she can bite it back. Reactions flicker across Frank’s face: surprise, confusion, uncertainty. And something else, equal parts affection and discomfort. She wishes she couldn’t read him so well.

“You want to?”

She’s about to roll her eyes but then she gets another look at his face. He’s serious. She stares at him in shock. “Frank. I care about you. I care what happens to you, even if you don’t.” His mouth compresses into something between disapproval and a smirk, but his eyes are warm on hers.

He reaches out to her, touches her face, the edge of his thumb grazing her jaw. Then he walks away, leaving her shivering and confused.

“Be careful,” she calls. He doesn’t turn around, but he raises a hand in acknowledgement.

She takes another cab back home (this secret meeting stuff is more expensive than she imagined) and trudges up the stairs to their apartment, feeling lonely and a little grumpy about the whole situation. She still hasn’t told Frank that Matt isn’t dead, and she doesn’t really know why. It hasn’t come up, or she hasn’t been able to find the words, or she’s so angry with Matt that she can barely think about him. Frank has been dead multiple times since she’s known him and he’s never let her worry about him for more than twenty four hours in a row. They’re usually more honest with each other than this, but she doesn’t want to talk about Matt. She doesn’t want to think about Matt.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What was he like?” 
> 
> The question startles Karen. No one ever asks her what Frank is like. They’re too busy either glorifying his actions or vilifying him to think of him as a human being, complete with flaws and redeeming qualities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst alert

Weeks pass quietly without any word from Frank. She takes full advantage of all her sources to keep track of him as best she can. There’s precious little to go on: a vehicular explosion at the docks where a DHS agent almost dies, a chop shop where several men are killed and a couple vehicles stolen, another DHS agent murdered in his home. She isn’t sure how she knows these are connected to Frank, but she can feel it in her bones.

She sees Foggy a few times and he tries to update her on how things are going between him and Matt. She breaks a couple new stories and wrangles a raise out of Ellison. She tries to cook a few times but she keeps burning things because she’s so distracted. When she burns a stir fry so badly that she has to throw away the pan, she finally gives in and reverts to eating takeout and frozen dinners.

Then she gets a summons from Homeland Security.

She reads the email, from an Agent Madani, and sighs because they probably want her to turn over all her notes on some case or other. Then she takes a harder look at the agent’s name, because she recognizes it. It only takes her a few minutes to track down why she knows it: Madani’s car was the one that exploded. There’d been no police report on the incident, which Karen had found strange.

The next morning she heads to the federal building in Soho, where she’s escorted to a large conference room and told to wait. She pulls out her notebook to go over her notes for her next story because she figures she’ll be waiting a while, and she’s not disappointed. Eventually, the door opens to admit a woman in an expensively sharp suit with perfect posture. Karen feels her own shoulders straightening in response.

“I’m acting SAC Dinah Madani,” she says, holding out her hand and smiling disarmingly. Karen shakes her hand, but her return smile is guarded. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Oh, no, I figured that was just the usual,” Karen says dryly. “A little gentle intimidation to soften me up?”

Madani smiles without letting on that she’s been caught. “Why would I want to intimidate you, Miss Page?”

What follows is an unsettling back and forth. Madani won’t explain what happened at the docks and when Karen pushes about Carson Wolf, the murdered agent, Dinah will only talk off the record.

“I think he was dirty and I think it got him killed,” she says.

Karen is pretty sure Frank did the killing, so that would make sense to her, but she’s hardly going to say as much to a government official.

The interrogation (Karen is under no illusions that this is a friendly conversation) loops around to Karen’s history in New York before Madani lobs Frank’s name at her like a grenade.

“Is that why I’m here? To talk about a dead man?”

“He kidnapped you out of police protective custody, but here you are, alive and well.”

She can’t help the little laugh that escapes her. “I had nothing to fear from Frank Castle.”

“He killed a lot of people.”

“He did.”

“What was he like?”

The question startles Karen. No one ever asks her what Frank is like. They’re too busy either glorifying his actions or vilifying him to think of him as a human being, complete with flaws and redeeming qualities.

“He was decent,” she says, careful to speak in the past tense. Madani doesn’t scoff at this statement, seemingly willing to take Karen’s assessment seriously, so she continues. “Honest. He had a code and a sense of honor.”

“That’s not how he’s portrayed by most people,” Madani says, cocking her head to look at Karen consideringly.

“Most people didn’t know him,” Karen retorts. “All they saw was a killer, and _most people_ are only okay with killers as long as they’re on the government’s payroll.” Madani opens her mouth to protest, but Karen beats her to it. “Have you ever killed in the line of duty, Agent?” Madani shakes her head. “How many of your fellow agents can say the same?” Madani’s mouth snaps shut. “Frank Castle was a decorated soldier long before he became the Punisher. Most people would say that makes him a hero, if not for what happened after, not that Frank ever would have agreed with them. But at least he was honest about what he did, and why.”

“You sound like you’re defending his actions.”

“Defending them? No,” Karen says, even though she really wants to defend him, sometimes. Whenever she thinks about Kevin and Ben, and where they would be if someone like Frank had taken on Fisk long ago... she doesn’t really think Frank is right, but she doesn’t think he’s wrong, either. “The story of Frank Castle is a tragedy, and I have complicated feelings about his methods. It’s not for me to say whether he was right or wrong. But I can understand why he did it. After what he went through...” She thinks about the crime scene photos she’s seen of the park, and shudders. “And the man I knew didn’t hurt innocents. That’s always been good enough for me.”

“Did he ever talk to you about his time in Kandahar?”

What the hell? “Agent Madani, what exactly happened at the docks?”

“I was there, about the same time as he was,” Madani says, as though Karen hadn’t spoken. “In Kandahar. Castle might have been the man I needed to talk to.”

_About what?_ Karen wants to yell, but she doesn’t. “It’s a shame he’s dead, then.”

“Yeah,” Madani sighs. “What do you think he’d be doing, if he were still alive?”

Karen gives the woman a flat look. Does she know Frank is alive, somehow? What the hell has he been doing the last couple weeks?

“Minding his own business,” she suggests, not caring how unsubtle she’s being. “Frank was a man better left alone, Agent Madani. Maybe we can grant him that, now that he’s gone.”

* * *

She goes straight home and puts the roses on the windowsill. The day passes at a glacial pace, most of which she spends fretting over how big a problem Agent Madani is going to be. It’s dark by the time she gets to the waterfront, and she curses this time of year for its blink-and-you’ll-miss-them evenings. It’s also fucking cold with the wind coming off the river, and she huddles into her coat while she waits, her hand clasped tight around her gun in her pocket just in case anyone besides Frank approaches her.

He swaggers up to lean on the railing next to her a short while later, a smirk clear on his freshly-shaved face. He looks good, and surprisingly free of cuts and bruises considering what she suspects he’s been doing lately. It’s a relief to see him, even if she’s annoyed at whatever the hell he did to get Agent Madani’s attention.

“Hey,” he says, and maybe she’s imagining it, but he looks really pleased to see her.

If she’s honest, she’s really pleased to see him, too.

She tells him about Madani, and he tells her about the docks, and David Lieberman, and how everything that’s gone wrong in his life is because of what he was doing in Kandahar. God, but he breaks her heart. She knows exactly how he feels, because what she did to Kevin is so similar, but—

“This can’t be all there is, Frank.” The words seem to wrench themselves from her very soul. “There has to be more.”

“More what?” He looks so lost.

“More! Something after revenge,” she says, and it sounds like she’s begging. “I want there to be an after for— for you.” _For us_ , she nearly says, but she’s no more ready to admit that than he is.

“I’ve gotta find these men that did this, and I’ve gotta kill them,” he snarls, and she gets it. She really does, she’s spent the past year working toward the same goal with Fisk. But...

“If you kill them, if you get what you want? The media will paint them as martyrs, Frank. Is that what you want?”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Expose them! Talk to Madani — talk to me, I’ll write a story. Just go on the record, let the truth hang them first.”

“No, they decide what the truth is,” Frank says. “You don’t get to do that.”

“Frank—“

“No! I can’t do this and keep you safe—“

“You don’t have to keep me safe—“ It’s the first time she’s ever tried to tell him that.

“Of course I have to keep you safe!” He shouts over her. “My family is _gone_ , because of what I know. They’re _gone_.” He steps closer, his eyes beseeching her to understand him, and his voice grows impossibly soft. “I cannot let that happen to you, okay? Karen. I cannot let that happen.”

She can barely see him through the tears in her eyes as he steps into her space. He kisses her cheek, and it takes every ounce of her willpower to keep from wrapping both arms around him, but she knows if she gives in she’ll never let go.

Then he’s gone, and Karen is left feeling more confused and alone than ever.

* * *

As she lets herself into the apartment, she considers calling Foggy for an impromptu trip to Josie’s, but all thoughts of drowning her sorrows fly out of her head when someone speaks from the deep shadows in the living room.

“You’re keeping dangerous company these days.”

An intruder in her apartment is just the cherry on top of this shitty, confusing day. She has her .380 out before he’s finished his sentence, but then she realizes she _knows_ that voice.

“Matt?” Something moves in the darkness and she doesn’t lower her gun. “How’d you get in here?” Something else occurs to her: “Have you been following me? How did you know where I live?”

He doesn’t answer her, which she supposes is answer enough. “Frank Castle?” He says instead. “Your new roommate is a murderer?” The condemnation in his voice is unmistakable, and unwelcome. It had been his idea to represent Frank in the first place, but all he’s done since then is pass judgment — on Frank for killing, on Karen for sympathizing. He never wanted to help Frank or lessen his prison sentence, just use him to find his own answers. “Don’t bother to deny it,” he adds. “I can smell him on you.”

Her cheek burns where Frank kissed her, but she refuses to be ashamed of him. “Who I live with is none of your business.” She starts to lower the gun, finally, certain that it really is Matt, which means he won’t hurt her.

He steps out of the shadows, but there’s something wrong with his silhouette, bulkier in the shoulders than usual, and smoother somehow, like he’s covered in a protective shell rather than the always-soft textures of his suits and hair. There’s no tell-tale tapping of his cane, and light from the windows behind him catches on something on his head, something that looks suspiciously like horns. The gun comes back up between them, almost of its own volition.

“Matt?” She hates how uncertain she sounds, but Matt’s voice is coming out of the Daredevil and she can’t believe she didn’t figure it out sooner. “I’m so stupid.”

“Karen—“

“No, this explains everything— the bruises and the absences, the lame excuses, all those times you had knowledge from a mysterious source— you didn’t have a source, you _were_ the source!” The accusations and realizations tumble from her lips, her mind racing as she fits the shrapnel from this bombshell into what she already knows of Matt Murdock. She stares at him, second guessing every conversation they’ve ever had. “Are you even— can you see? Can you _see?_ ”

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence. Matt — _Daredevil_ — shifts guiltily from foot to foot. “Not the way you mean. I’m really blind.”

“But?”

“But... my other senses are much more powerful. I can smell chemical changes in people’s bodies, hear their heartbeats. I know when they’re lying to me. I know what you look like.”

She feels so, so stupid. He’s been keeping this monumental secret from her, and she _knew_ he was lying about something, she knew he had secrets, but this? This never entered her mind. She was so blinded — pun _not_ intended — by the cane and the glasses and the sweet hapless exterior that it never occurred to her that this was what he was hiding. The fight goes out of her and she drops her stance so her pistol hangs uselessly from one hand.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” She asks the question, but does she really want to hear whatever excuses Matt comes up with? “I would have understood,” she says, before he can answer. “I didn’t judge Frank, so why would I judge you?”

Matt scoffs. “You _should_ judge Frank. He’s a killer.” 

She flinches. Frank is a killer — and so is she. They’ve both done unforgivable things. Maybe on different scales — but are they really so different?

She doesn’t think so.

“What do you want, Matt?” Her voice is hard and unforgiving.

He doesn’t answer for a moment, and she gets the sense he’s _looking_ at her. Not with his eyes, obviously, but his focus is clearly on her, and he’s weighing something. Her trustworthiness, or her mettle, or— she doesn’t know, or care, she just wants an answer.

“Fisk is getting out of prison,” he says, and it takes every ounce of her fortitude to not stagger under the weight of this news. “I need your help to send him back.”

She turns away from him, needing a physical distance between her and the horrible bomb he just detonated in her fucking living room. She’s scared, and she wants Frank. Wants his solid bulk and steadiness and dry wit, wants him here to argue with instead of wherever the hell he is right now. Wants him here because he’d probably already have punched Matt in the face and she can admit to herself that watching that happen would feel fucking _great_ right now.

“How did this happen?”

“He paid a fellow inmate to shank him so the FBI would think his life was in danger. They’re moving him to a hotel penthouse and I found out the guy who shanked him is getting out on parole, even though his sentence didn’t include the possibility of parole.”

She whips around to find Matt closer than she expected. “How do you know all of this?”

“Fisk told me some of it,” he says. “The rest I got from an FBI agent or pieced together.”

“What exactly do you expect me to do about it?” She’s not a lawyer, or a cop. She’s just a secretary turned office manager turned investigative journalist. And what she really, really wants, is for Fisk to be dead. Not in prison, not free, but six feet deep in the darkest grave she can dig for him.

“I need you to find the man who attacked Fisk in prison, Jasper Evans. If he goes on the record then we can take it to the FBI and prove that Fisk is playing them. They’ll have no choice but to send him back to prison.”

She doesn’t respond, her mind racing. She’s angry and terrified and she hasn’t felt this alone in months. Matt is probably right, they should find this witness and put Fisk away for good, but this could be her only chance to avenge Kevin’s death.

“What do you say?” Matt asks, his tone indicating there’s only one answer he expects to hear. “Will you help me?”

She looks at him, hard. “No.”

“Kare—“

“Get out, Matt. Go home.”

She sleeps with her gun under her pillow that night, and every night for a long time after.

* * *

She makes it nearly two days before giving in and looking for Jasper Evans. Two nights of waking up screaming from nightmares of Fisk strangling her, two days of watching over her shoulder and weighing her chances and wondering what the right thing to do is. The confrontation with Matt has been weighing on her. He’s a shitty friend and a liar and she’ll never trust him again, but he’s still the same man she was so taken by all those months ago, filled with righteousness. She doesn’t know if that means he should be her moral compass. She doesn’t know if wanting Fisk dead makes her a bad person, or just human.

She calls Foggy, initiating contact for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. She’s been kind of a hypocrite, so angry at Matt for being such a shitty friend while also being a pretty terrible one herself. They meet up for lunch.

“I just have all this anger and I don’t know what to do with it,” she admits. “I don’t want to forgive him but I don’t think I can let this lead go. But I also don’t want him to think I’m just going to forget everything he’s put us through, you know?”

Foggy nods thoughtfully. “I get it. Karen, I really do. But Matt feels like everyone who was ever important to him has abandoned him.” He sighs. “I can’t abandon him now, no matter how terrible he’s been as a friend lately.”

Karen sighs too, raking a hand through her hair in agitation. “I’m not ready to forgive him,” she says, her voice sharp, but then she relents a little. “I’ll think about it, though, and in the meantime I’ll see if I can find his witness.” That earns her a smile from Foggy, and he promises to help her in any way he can. They spend a few minutes catching up and Karen finds herself biting her lip when Foggy asks how her roommate is working out.

“About that,” she says, inwardly cringing at his reaction to the news she’s about to share. She doesn’t really want to tell him, but she’s been so furious and hurt by all of Matt’s secrets and lies, it feels hypocritical not to tell Foggy some of hers. “My roommate... you know how you keep asking to meet him, and I keep putting you off?”

“Yeah?” Foggy draws out the word, his expression caught between curiosity and apprehension.

“You already know him.”

“Oh. But then, why—” understanding dawns on Foggy’s face. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“No,” Karen laughs, shaking her head ruefully. “You’re really not.”

“Well, it can’t be worse than Matt’s ninja assassin ex, lay it on me.”

“Wait, Matt’s _what?_ ” 

“Oh, I thought you met her? Elektra, tiny brunette, likes to wreak havoc for fun?”

“ _Met_ is a strong word for it,” Karen says, thinking back to that awkward, infuriating moment in Matt’s apartment. It feels like it happened a long time ago. “Anyway, if she’s a ninja assassin, then I guess my roommate is... about on par?”

“Why are my friends like this?” Foggy buries his face in his hands for a moment. “Okay, I’m ready,” he says into his palms, his voice coming out muffled until he drops his hands to look at her again. “Who is this guy?”

She takes a deep breath to brace herself and lowers her voice. “It’s Frank.”

Foggy stares at her. “Frank,” he says, voice flat. “Frank _Castle?_ ” He looks even more horrified than she imagined. He leans forward across the table, lowering his voice and pinning her with a serious look. “Karen, Frank Castle is _dangerous_.”

“No.” She shakes her head in emphasis. “Not to me.”

“What?” He yelps. “Do you not remember sitting next to him during his indictment for the murders of _thirty-seven people?_ ”

“Of course, I remember,” she says, exasperated. “I know he’s a dangerous person. But he’s not dangerous to me.” Foggy opens his mouth to protest, but she can’t let him believe Frank would hurt her. The very idea is laughable, especially after their fight by the river. He won’t even let her put herself in danger on his behalf, she can’t imagine a situation where he would be a threat to her. “You just have to trust me on this one, Foggy.”

“Yeah,” he sighs reluctantly. “Okay. I just don’t know why you and Matt can’t have nice, normal significant others like me.”

“Oh, please, as if Marci isn’t the scariest of the lot. And Frank isn’t my significant other, he’s just my roommate.”

Foggy mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _for now_ , which Karen graciously ignores.

* * *

She makes slow progress over the next week tracking Matt’s witness down, partially because he’s hard to find, but also, if she’s honest, partially because she doesn’t really want to find him. She still doesn’t know what to do about Fisk, whether Matt’s way or Frank’s way (her way, if she’s honest) is the best course of action.

She drops the search entirely when the city is rocked by a terror attack.

Ellison has all hands on deck at the office, everyone trying to figure out what’s going on and how high the death toll is. Two separate explosions, one at City Hall and the other at the 15th Precinct, have caused chaos and dozens of casualties. Late in the afternoon, Karen takes advantage of a brief lull to check her mail. It takes her a few moments to realize what she’s reading.

The bomber sent her his manifesto. She reads it to Ellison with growing horror, wondering how this person could so completely misinterpret her stance on the city’s vigilantes. She starts writing her response while she waits for the FBI to show up.

Her office is still swarming with FBI agents and police officers the next day, and she knows they’re just doing their jobs but she’s still cranky about it. A late night, followed by restless sleep and an early morning spot on a radio show would have been plenty reason for her to be a little short-tempered, but the verbal confrontation with the bomber left her more shaken than she wants to admit.

She’s not really sure what the hell they’re all doing in here, anyway — it’s not like the bomber mailed himself to her along with his letter. She’s already been fingerprinted, and the letter was photographed and removed the night before, and now she keeps having to chase techs off when they try to dust her entire office for prints. She thanks her lucky stars that Frank has never visited her at work, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to let any of her other sources be compromised due to overzealous police work.

She’s answering the same set of standard questions for the third time that day, her answers growing increasingly clipped as the bored FBI agent carefully notes everything she says in his little notepad, when her phone rings. It’s an unknown number, but that’s not unusual in her line of work, so she answers it.

“Karen, what the hell?”

All the breath whooshes out of her at the sound of Frank’s voice. She hadn’t realized how worried she was about him until now she knows he’s okay. It quickly turns to irritation because the first time he calls her in weeks is to yell at her about... something. He kind of has a lot of options.

“Hang on,” she says, turning to the agent. “Can I have the room?” He looks interested for the first time since he showed up, but he nods and gathers the other members of law enforcement scattered around her office and closes the door behind him.

“Ok,” she says to Frank. “Can you be more specific?”

“What the fuck was that article this morning? And the thing on the radio? Are you _trying_ to make yourself a target?”

“I’m just doing my job,” she snaps back. “He wrote to me, specifically, and I didn’t like that he thought I’d agree with him. What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

“Is the FBI there?”

If he doesn’t stop answering her questions with his own she is going to scream. “Yeah,” she says, hoping he can hear the frustration in her voice.

“Good, stay with them until this gets dealt with.”

“Dealt with— wait, wait a minute. Do you know who he is?”

The silence from the other end of the line speaks volumes.

“You have to tell me who he is, don’t go after him on your own,” she tries, even though it feels futile. “The FBI is right here, they can deal with this.”

“My way is faster,” he growls. “Just stay put.”

He hangs up on her. She’d be outraged if she wasn’t so scared of whatever he’s about to do.

* * *

She’s still at work hours later, trying to plan out her questions for her interview with Senator Ori the next day, when Ellison barges in, startling her enough that she jumps.

“Did you know?” He demands, and there are so many secrets she’s been sitting on that all she can do is stare back in bewilderment. He snatches up her remote and turns on her television.

A breaking news bulletin blares, and Frank is the headline. She feels like she’s going to be sick.

“Frank Castle is still alive. Did you know?” Ellison asks again, but she doesn’t answer.

* * *

Matt and Foggy are both waiting on the steps outside her building when she gets home, and she appreciates their concern, she really does, but she also really just wants to eat some comfort food and then collapse into bed and not think for eight hours. Foggy grabs her in a hug that she didn’t know she needed, and she fights back tears for a second before unlocking the front door.

“Come on up,” she says, gesturing them inside.

They trail after her into the apartment, and she flips lights on and kicks out of her shoes. Without asking if they want anything, she goes to the fridge and pulls out three bottles of beer and passes them around. She doesn’t know what to say, so she just takes a long pull from her bottle and waits for them to tell her why they’re here.

Foggy is the first to break the silence. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, sure,” she laughs humorlessly. “My roommate is on the lam, a terrorist handpicked me to deliver his manifesto to the world, and I still haven’t found the one person who can put Fisk back in prison. But yeah, other than all that, I’m great.”

“We’re not here to ask about Jasper Evans,” Matt says quickly. “We just wanted to make sure you were okay after... after the news this afternoon.”

She blinks. Matt is the last person she would expect to be concerned about how she feels about Frank’s cover being blown. “Oh,” she manages to say. “Thank you.”

Foggy is opening and closing drawers in the kitchen. “Aha!” He triumphantly waves her stack of takeout menus that she’s re-accumulated now that Frank hasn’t been there to throw them out. He shuffles through them quickly and pulls one out. “Dim sum?”

Karen feels herself relaxing, even smiling a little. “You always know the right thing to say, Foggy.”

“It’s my superpower,” he says, surprising a snort of laughter out of her. Even Matt, who she hasn’t seen smile since before he died, chuckles.

They order way too much food and eat it sitting around the coffee table. Foggy refers to it as a weapons crate at one point and Karen laughingly insists that she doesn’t know what he means, because all she sees is Frank’s custom-made coffee table. She drinks a little too much and laughs too loud and she doesn’t care because it feels so good to pretend it’s the good old days, even if just for one evening.

By the time they leave, much later than any of them planned, Karen is feeling warm and sleepy and maybe even a little bit hopeful that everything in her life is going to work out somehow.

* * *

She’s in an elevator with Frank Castle and all she can think is—

_Alive, alive, we’re alive._

Her eyes are still burning from the smoke and she may never get the acrid stench of burning flesh out of her lungs, but they’re alive. Frank is covered in blood and his arm is hanging uselessly, but they’re alive. He looks like shit and she feels like shit, but they’re alive and together and that’s going to have to be enough for her.

He gives her the gun and her hands aren’t even shaking when she takes it, metal still warm from his palm. She should already be rehearsing her story for the cops, because she can hardly tell them it was her idea for Frank to use her as a human shield in his escape. But she can’t seem to focus on anything other than Frank. He’s knocking the cover off the maintenance hatch, looking up through it like he’s already planning his next steps.

“Frank.” His name falls from her lips, soft and desperate, and she almost wishes he didn’t hear her, because the way he looks at her— it’s like he’s a ship in the harbor and she’s the only thing anchoring him from drifting out to be lost at sea. She feels like a ghost, like maybe they didn’t really make it and now she’s haunting him. She reaches out to touch him but he’s been through so much she almost can’t find a safe place to put her hand.

She ends up touching his shoulder, the only spot on him that isn’t covered in blood or obviously injured. He sways into her, his eyes running over her face and hair, settling briefly on her eyes, the blood running down the side of her face, her mouth. She feels it like a physical touch, a trail of fire that leaves an ache burning around her heart.

_I missed you_ , she thinks. _Come back to me_.

He nods like she spoke the words aloud, leans into her until his forehead rests warm against hers. He sighs, his breath ghosting warm against her skin, and it’s the same sound he makes when she gets home every day.

She could stay like this for hours but he has to go, it isn’t safe for him in this building, so she pulls away with an effort. “Go,” she forces herself to say. “Go on.”

* * *

She goes back to the office, after, and Ellison stares at her in exasperation before sending her home with strict instructions not to come back for a full week.

The apartment feels emptier than ever, and even though she knows she should be resting, she can’t sit still. If she’s not working then she has to think about almost dying, and lying to the cops, and the way Frank was looking at her. It’s all too much for her right now.

She finishes a fluff piece Ellison assigned her, a full week ahead of schedule. She digs into her notes on an old investigation that went cold and manages to drum up a few new leads. She volunteers to help Foggy put together his campaign website for DA, because that’s a thing that’s happening. He tells her about the list of rules the FBI placed on Fisk’s house arrest, the different ways he can fuck up his cushy new prison. It’s good information, but she can’t really use it yet, so she goes back to editing his website copy. She even willingly sits through an hour-long mass with Matt one morning.

That takes all of three days. In desperation, she picks up her search for Jasper Evans. Looking for him eats up two more days of Ellison’s edict.

She finds him.

* * *

“It’s nice to see you again, Karen.”

The unfamiliar voice coming out of Matt’s suit sends chills down her spine. Evans is dead, Foggy and Ellison are groaning on the floor, she doesn’t know where Matt is, and she’s probably about to die. But he just— _leaves_. Smiles the creepiest smile she’s ever laid eyes on and then turns and walks away, leaving her to try and pick up the pieces of her life.

She talks to cop after cop until she’s almost numb. Matt is alive, though a bit banged up, and Foggy is furious but unhurt. She goes to the hospital in the morning once Ellison is out of surgery, trying not to think of all of her coworkers who are just _gone_ , and she’s so exhausted and terrified and miserable that she lets slip one of her secrets. Unfortunately it’s one of the big ones, and when she won’t give Daredevil’s real identity to Ellison, he fires her.

She goes home in a daze, but being in the apartment right now is a mistake. She calls her dad, and it isn’t until he picks up the phone and she hears his voice that she realizes it’s the last thing she wants to hear. She hangs up without speaking. Her father is a door that she closed a long time ago. If she opens it now, it’ll only bring back all that old pain, and she thinks, after the week she’s had, she shouldn’t have to feel that, too.

Instead, she looks for Frank. She just needs some assurance that he’s alive, even if he can’t be here. It doesn’t take much digging. She makes three phone calls and learns almost more than she wants to know: there was a shootout at the carousel last night, at about the same time as she was listening to the violent sounds of her coworkers being murdered. A DHS agent is in critical condition; two bystanders, just kids, are wounded but okay; one former Marine is in custody.

She thinks that’s the worst of it — Frank captured, but alive — but it’s not.

Another former Marine is dead.

The bottom drops out of her stomach when she hears that.

Frank has to have been involved, the location speaks for itself, but she can’t find any more information on any of the casualties. She calls the hospital, but they won’t tell her anything. She tries Dinah Madani’s phone number, her panic rising, but there’s no answer. She’s about to leave, to go directly to either the hospital or Homeland Security to shake someone until they tell her what’s happening, she hasn’t decided which, when she gets a breaking news alert on her phone.

_The Punisher Dead: Reign of Terror Ends_.

Her phone slips from nerveless fingers, and she sits down, hard. Foggy is already calling her, but she can’t seem to make her body follow her commands enough to pick up her phone and answer him. What would she even say? She can’t fathom talking to anyone about this right now. It was bad enough the first time Frank died, when she still didn’t have the full story, when she thought she could accept his help and still manage to walk away after. She’s been so scared of everything he makes her feel, she’s been holding him at arm’s length, trying to keep her heart safe from the possibility of losing him, and none of it mattered.

Her heart is in ruins anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just trust me, okay?


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She takes a quick shower and pulls her hair back neatly and does her makeup. No amount of concealer can cover up the redness rimming her eyes, but she puts on mascara and lipstick and blush and then dresses very carefully in an outfit that makes her feel confident and powerful. She thinks of all the times she’s watched Frank gear up for a mission, and maybe her armor is different from his, but it feels the same when she puts it on.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting on the floor in their kitchen, but she finally comes back to herself enough to notice that her legs have gone numb and her back is aching from holding the same position for so long. Her phone is lying on the floor next to her, and she picks it up to find dozens of notifications from Foggy and Matt and every news site she follows and even one from Ellison asking if she’s okay. She stares at them for a while, unseeing, and then she gets up.

She takes a quick shower and pulls her hair back neatly and does her makeup. No amount of concealer can cover up the redness rimming her eyes, but she puts on mascara and lipstick and blush and then dresses very carefully in an outfit that makes her feel confident and powerful. She thinks of all the times she’s watched Frank gear up for a mission, and maybe her armor is different from his, but it feels the same when she puts it on.

The city is alive this time of night, full of lights and sounds. She walks, because it isn’t that far. The night air is cold, soothing her burning skin and lungs, aching from the effort of holding herself together. She can hear cars and honking horns, see people as she passes them, but everything feels so far away, she might as well have the city to herself.

Inside the hotel, she takes the elevator up, talks her way past the government guard dogs and into Fisk’s inner sanctum. It’s almost laughably easy, which is infuriating. It’s easy because she doesn’t look like a threat. It’s easy because he thinks she can’t hurt him.

He’s about to learn otherwise.

Fisk’s apartment isn’t her style, all clean lines and stark white walls, but she can appreciate the view and the millions of dollars in paintings gracing the walls. The Rothko is a particularly impressive touch. He greets her, all smug magnanimity, and he’s so sure of himself that it’s child’s play to get him to clear the room. She baits him, goads him, shares anything she can think of to get under his skin. She tries out every transgression she’s ever made against him, whether he knows about them or not. And when none of them work, when his composure remains unbroken, she lays down her trump card with a snarl of hatred.

“ _I_ killed Wesley.” Her mouth curls with vindictive pleasure to finally be telling her nightmare the truth. “I shot him seven times. The clip ran out — he deserved more.”

The satisfaction is instantaneous. Fisk begins to shake, a vein throbbing in his temple, his face contorting with rage. He surges to his feet, his hands reaching for her throat, and she thinks _finally_. She’ll never get her revenge but at least he won’t be able to terrorize the city anymore. She won’t be around to enjoy it but at least she’ll have made a difference.

Then Foggy and the FBI burst through the door.

* * *

Foggy has been yelling at her for twenty minutes, basically since the moment they walked through the deli’s front door and threw the deadbolt home. She understands where he’s coming from, if he had done something like this she’d be yelling at him, but she’s just so tired. She’s exhausted, and heartsick, and scared, and if she wasn’t so busy feeling all of that she’d be furious that he foiled her plan.

“What were you thinking?” He demands for the fifth time, his voice scaling into a yelp of frustration, and she finally looks up and answers him.

“It would be over.”

He blinks in surprise that she’s finally joined the conversation. “What?”

“I was thinking,” she says slowly, carefully, forcing every word to come out with perfect clarity in spite of the tears clogging her throat, “that it would finally be over. Everything. They would have Fisk on camera breaking the terms of his deal, and he would go away, forever this time, and that would be it.”

Foggy is gaping at her. “Karen, he would have _killed you_.”

“That possibility had occurred to me.” She says it as gently as possible, but there’s really no kind way to tell your friend you just tried to get yourself murdered. He sits down heavily, like his knees are no longer capable of holding him up, and really looks at her for the first time all evening. She’s crying and her hair has come out of its neat twist and she feels so fucking miserable. She wishes Frank was here. She wishes she knew what happened to him — the full story, not the watered down bullshit the media has been running. She wishes she didn’t feel so fucking helpless and that she hadn’t provoked the Kingpin, but she couldn’t see any other way through. She still can’t.

“What did you say to him?” Foggy finally asks. His round, honest face is filled with trepidation, and she hates to make it worse, but...

“I think I need attorney client privilege for this one.”

To his credit, he recovers quickly. “Shit. Um, okay, just give me five bucks.” He takes the bill she fishes out of her wallet and then he just waits.

It’s not as easy to tell Foggy as it was to tell Frank, but she manages it. She tells him everything that happened that night when Wesley kidnapped her, and when she’s done she wonders if it makes her a bad person that she feels better for the telling. Foggy just looks at her for a long moment, concern and sadness creasing his face.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She finally asks.

“Because my amazing, kind, brilliant friend went through something terrible, and I didn’t know,” he says, and she has to look away.

“I want you to tell me I’m a bad person.” She’s been wondering where she falls for months, good or bad, and tonight she thinks she finally has her answer. She just needs confirmation from the best person she knows.

“You’re not a bad person, Karen,” Foggy says, giving her a stern look back when she looks at him askance. “You’re not. You were in an impossible situation, and you made a choice. I can’t judge you for that.”

She can’t stop crying. “I think I need to run,” she says, because now that Fisk knows what she did there’s nowhere safe for her in the city.

Foggy looks pained, but he doesn’t argue. “I’ll help you,” is all he says.

He takes her home to pack some stuff and calls Matt on the way and she’s pathetically grateful that she doesn’t have to call Matt herself. Foggy has handled this whole thing surprisingly well, which probably means she should trust her friends more, but receiving a similar reaction from Matt seems like too much to hope for right now.

He wants to know what’s going on, but Foggy refuses to tell him. She’s never been so grateful for lawyer-client privilege before. They argue, and when Matt shows up he tries to get her to talk, but she’s just not capable of having that conversation right now. She stonewalls him, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t feel just a little bit good to give him a taste of his own medicine.

* * *

It’s Matt’s idea to stash her at the church. He and Foggy take her there and introduce her to Father Lantom. She can’t help but feel she doesn’t belong there.

“I’m not Catholic,” she says at one point, and the good Father smiles kindly.

“That’s not what Sanctuary is about,” he says, and leads her down several dimly lit halls and stairwells to a basement room. It must be where Matt’s been staying, because there’s a boxing bag hanging in the corner and a spare cane propped against one wall. It’s dark and cold but something about it feels safe. Just for a little while, maybe she can rest here.

* * *

Of course it doesn’t last, her luck has never been that good. The fake Daredevil comes after her, and Matt is there but it’s not enough. He can’t be everywhere at once, he can’t protect her, not when everything in reach can become a deadly projectile in the hands of Fisk’s rabid lapdog.

It’s chaos in the church. Father Lantom is trying to get his flock to safety, and she tries to help, but everywhere she turns, something sharp and deadly is flying through the air in her path. A window shatters, raining glass on her head, and people are screaming in pain and terror, and the fake Daredevil is horribly silent. She runs and dodges, but she can’t find an opening. She knows he’s herding her, but she can’t seem to do anything about it, and then she’s standing in front of the altar, watching him prepare to throw his club, and everything gets quiet.

_This is the end_ , she thinks. There’s nowhere left to run, nowhere she can hide. She can no longer hear the screams of the congregation, or Matt’s grunts and shouts, she can hear nothing over the sound of her heartbeat crashing in her ears. She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and waits to die.

Something tackles her from the side with a roar, arms wrapping around her as momentum carries them both off the dais and behind the dubious cover of the first row of pews. A hand cradles her head to protect it from the floor and she lands on her back with a weight on top of her, hard enough to knock all the air from her lungs. Calloused fingers run over her arms, up into her hair, a trembling hand cups her face. _I’m dreaming_ , she thinks. She must be dreaming. Someone is saying her name, his voice a frantic growl in her ear, and she doesn’t want to open her eyes because then the dream will be over.

“Karen— Karen, please, tell me you’re okay, please sweetheart.” His voice breaks, and it finally convinces her to risk opening her eyes, because surely if this was a dream, he wouldn’t sound so devastated. She looks up into warm, dark eyes, and without meaning to, she starts to cry.

“Frank?” She hates how her voice breaks, hates even more how distressed he looks.

“Karen.” Her name becomes a prayer on his lips. His thumb brushes across her cheek, catching her tears. She’s cried so much lately. “What’s wrong?”

“Am I dead?” It’s the only explanation she can come up with for how he’s here, but he laughs, relief and joy smoothing out his expression.

“No, sweetheart,” he says, dropping his forehead to press against hers, warm and alive. “You’re not dead.”

Something crashes against the altar behind him, shattering their little bubble of peace in the chaos. Frank sits up, dragging her up after him, and they back into the pew.

“Here.” He hands her a gun, waiting only long enough for her to wrap her fingers around it before pulling out another. They prep their weapons in tandem silence, familiar after so much time spent together at the firing range. They both ease up to peek over the edge of the bench. The two Daredevils, one in black, the other red, are in the center aisle. The red-clad fake has run out of sharp things to throw and is snatching up bibles from the rows nearest him to hurl at Matt and at all of the terrified people still huddled around the altar. Matt is knocking down everything he can, but some of it is still making it into the crowd. The vaulted ceiling rings with cries of pain and terror.

She trades a look with Frank, nods, and they both break cover at the same time. She pops up to fire off a couple of shots at the attacker, and Frank uses the cover fire to move across the center aisle. As soon as he’s across, she drops back down and moves back toward the altar.

Matt closes the distance to his doppelgänger, knocking the last bible out of his hands and punching him hard in the stomach.

“Karen, get them out of here,” Frank yells. He takes a shot at the fake Daredevil and almost hits Matt. The bullet cuts past Matt’s neck before pinging off his opponent’s shoulder armor. “Goddamn it.”

Karen chokes on a laugh at Frank’s blasphemous language. She makes her way over to Father Lantom, keeping low but trusting that Frank and Matt will keep her would-be assassin busy.

“What’s the quickest way out of here, Father?”

He points at an unremarkable door in the side of the church behind her.

“It leads into the rectory. We can call the police from there and get everyone out.”

“Okay, everyone stay low,” she says, glancing around and making eye contact with as many people as she can. Frank is yelling something at the fake Daredevil, and Matt is grunting, but she focuses on her task. “And stay calm. Follow Father Lantom, I’ll cover you.” There are frightened nods and shaky okays.

“Isn’t that...?”

“He won’t let anyone hurt you,” Karen says truthfully, holding the young woman’s gaze until she nods. “Get moving.”

It seems to take forever for them all to crawl off the dais and sneak over to the door. Karen only has half her attention on them, the rest tracking the fight happening in the middle of the room. Frank has moved in close, and he and Matt are taking turns trading blows with the fake Daredevil. He has his gun in one hand and keeps trying to bring it in to fire at point-blank range, and Matt keeps interfering, holding Frank’s arm so he can’t aim properly, or inserting himself between the gun and their opponent. The result is that none of them can get the upper hand, and part of her really wants to roll her eyes at Matt because this could be over already if he would just get out of the way, but the rest of her understands that his code is what defines him. It’s going to get him killed, but she knows all about dying for a cause. She can understand his commitment even if she doesn’t exactly agree with what he’s committed to.

Then the impostor gets a lucky hit in on Matt, clipping him upside the head with his elbow. Matt staggers back, stunned, tripping to the floor, but it isn’t the turning point the assassin was looking for, because now no one is there to stop Frank. He blocks the first hit the other man throws, locking his arm in a hold that Karen is all too familiar with from their sparring sessions, and brings the gun up tight under the man’s exposed jaw.

“Bull’s eye,” Frank snarls, and pulls the trigger. The gunshot echoes thunderously, nearly drowning out Matt’s shout of protest, but Karen is too busy rushing forward to worry about his disapproval. She shoves her gun into her waistband and slams into Frank, throwing her arms around him with a sob of relief. He catches her and holds on tight, burying his face in the crook of her neck.

Neither of them notices Matt until he’s right next to them.

“You didn’t have to do that, Frank,” he says, still out of breath. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

Frank looks down at the body at their feet, then back at Matt, without so much as a trace of regret on his face. “Yeah, I fucking did.”

Matt looks like he wants to argue, but then he cocks his head like he heard something. “The cops are almost here.”

Father Lantom gestures from the doorway. “This way! We can hide you.”

Matt isn’t paying attention, though. He’s bending down to the dead man, reaching for his mask, and Karen grabs him before he can touch it.

“No, Matt,” she says, somehow pulling him away without ever letting go of Frank.

“But—“

Now Frank is pulling on him, too. “Leave him for the cops.”

“They’ll think you’re dead,” Karen agrees. “Or, not _you_ — Daredevil.”

“You’re gonna have to lay low for a while, Red,” Frank says, almost conversationally. They follow the priest through the maze of hallways to the basement room where Karen stayed last night. On the way, she asks him to text Foggy that they’re alright. She doesn’t want him to hear about the fake Daredevil’s death and think it’s Matt. Father Lantom shows them a few hiding spots, an empty sarcophagus and a crawl space with a hidden trapdoor, and Karen helps Frank shove Matt into the tomb (irony, _hah_ ) before climbing into the crawl space and pulling Frank in after her.

It’s a tight fit, but she puts her arms around his waist and closes her eyes and just breathes. They don’t speak, not knowing how soundproof this little space is, but they don’t really need to. Frank pulls her closer, burying his face in her hair, and they settle in to wait.

* * *

Sometime later — it could be minutes or hours, she isn’t sure — Father Lantom knocks on the outside of the trapdoor and opens it for them. Matt is already out of his hiding spot, and Foggy is there, too.

Karen blinks against the light, rousing from her doze. Frank’s warmth surrounds her, and despite the uncomfortable hiding spot, it’s the safest she’s felt in weeks. She kind of wants to burrow deeper into Frank’s side and stay there for the foreseeable future.

Instead, she sits up and accepts Foggy’s hand, letting him pull her to her feet. Frank is right behind her, and then the trapdoor is closed and there’s almost no sign of the shelter they found there. Father Lantom mumbles an excuse and the rest of them stand around awkwardly for a minute while they all wonder _what now?_

Foggy is the first to break the silence. “We have to do something about Fisk.”

“I _was_ doing something,” Matt snaps. “I gave up what could be my only chance to kill him to come here and save Karen instead.” She flinches guiltily at the anger in his voice.

“You saying that was a hard choice?” Frank is standing slightly behind her so she can’t see his face, but his voice is filled with disgust and fury, and he moves closer until his shoulder is pressing into hers.

“He could be dead by now!” Matt yells.

“So could Karen!” Frank growls without raising his voice. “Fisk’s days are numbered, Murdock. You don’t need to worry about that. Get your priorities straight.”

“Can you two please stop premeditating a murder right in front of your lawyer?”

Karen chokes back a laugh at Foggy’s plaintive question, but her amusement is short lived. “Why is it okay for you to kill Fisk, but you still tried to save your evil twin up there?”

“He was mentally unstable; he deserved help, a second chance.” Half of Matt’s face is covered up by his blindfold, but it does nothing to soften the furious look he turns on Frank. “Now he’ll never get it.” Frank scoffs, completely unrepentant.

“But this _is_ Fisk’s second chance,” Matt continues, “and look how he’s using it!”

“Matt, what the hell,” Foggy says. “That doesn’t mean you get to kill him!”

Karen pinches the bridge of her nose. “Look, it’s not that I don’t agree with you,” she says to Matt, ignoring Foggy. She definitely wants Fisk dead. She’s more than willing to pull the trigger herself. But there’s something so wrong about the same concept leaving Matt’s mouth. “I don’t think it’s safe to leave Fisk alive. I’ll kill him myself if I get the chance.” Fuck, she hopes she gets the chance. She ignores Foggy’s inarticulate noise of protest. “But, Matt— this isn’t you.”

“Maybe it could be,” Matt says after a short pause, like he’s actually thought it over and is really willing to stretch his morals that far.

“It shouldn’t be.”

“She’s right, Red,” Frank speaks up. “You cross over to my side of the line, you don’t get to come back from that. Not ever.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Foggy says, “but I agree with Castle.”

Matt’s jaw sets stubbornly, but he doesn’t argue further. “It doesn’t really matter, because we can’t get to him,” he says instead. “He’s too well protected. It was hard enough for me to get into his penthouse once, I doubt we’ll get another chance.”

Karen shifts uncomfortably. She’s not sure if she feels guilty or not about that. On the one hand, she didn’t really want to die, no matter how much she had resigned herself to the possibility in the last couple days. On the other, if he hadn’t chosen to come help her, Fisk would likely be dead by now.

The queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of Matt becoming a murderer is answer enough.

“What if we don’t have to get to him?”

Frank looks up sharply at her question. “What are you thinking?”

“What if we could get him to come to us?”

“Karen,” Foggy whines. “Please tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“You can use me as bait,” she suggests. Foggy throws his hands up in exasperation, but Matt actually appears to be considering it.

Frank says one word: “No.”

“Why not? We know Fisk wants me dead, and his pet psycho killer failed so he’s more likely to come himself this time.”

Frank steps up closer to her, his voice low and intense and determined. “I am _not_ using you as bait.”

“ _Why not?_ ” Karen demands again, unable to keep the exasperation from bleeding into her tone. “You’ve done it before! Why not now?”

Frank flinches away from her steady gaze. “Just— no, okay? No.”

“Fine.” She turns to the other vigilante in the room. “Matt?”

Frank mutters a heartfelt _fuck_ and stomps off, lashing out at the punching bag on his way by.

“It could work,” Matt says after a pause, neither of them acknowledging Frank’s reaction. “We would need to leak your location somehow.”

“I was thinking something a little more direct,” Karen says.

* * *

Which is how she ends up spending the early hours of the morning digging up her brother’s grave.

She’d explained to Foggy and Matt about the flash drive she buried with Kevin, and how its contents could still damage Fisk’s reputation so he would want to get it back. All they have to do is dig it up and ransom it to draw Fisk out into the open. Then they call the cops — if Fisk is caught breaking his house arrest, he’ll be sent back to jail.

Of course Karen doesn’t intend to let him live that long. But she’s not going to tell her friends that. Not when Foggy seems to have talked Matt around to letting the law take care of Fisk.

She finds Frank before they leave. He’s up in the bell tower, staring out over the city, and he doesn’t turn when she comes in even though she wasn’t exactly quiet. She knows he knows she’s there.

She thinks about saying something. _Hey_ , maybe, or _I’m sorry_. Or even _you_ know _I can take care of myself_. But none of it seems to be the point, so she just stands next to him and looks out over the city in silence. He shifts a little, pressing his shoulder into hers, and she hides a smile. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees his twitchy finger go still.

“You scare the hell out of me, you know?” He doesn’t look at her, his voice a soft rumble beside her, but she thinks he leans into her just a little bit harder.

“I know.” He scares the hell out of her, too, though she’s not sure if they mean the same way. They’re quiet a little while longer. Karen has no idea what to say. Frank puts himself in danger all the time and she never tries to stop him, no matter how much she might want to. She didn’t really expect him to resist so much now that she’s finally within reach of her goal.

“So what’s the plan?” he finally asks. Karen turns toward him, unable to keep the surprise from her face. “You didn’t really think I was going to sit this one out?” He scowls at her. “Ma’am, you should know better than that by now.”

“Oh, we’re back to ‘ma’am’ now, huh?”

He huffs a laugh and she rolls her eyes amiably, filling him in on the broad strokes of her plan. She doesn’t tell him she’s planning on killing Fisk, but he gives her a look when she glosses over the part of the plan where Fisk gets arrested. He doesn’t call her on it though, and she’s grateful — there’s no way to tell whether Matt is eavesdropping or not. He nods once when she’s finished, and she tips her head toward the doorway in a wordless invitation to head down together.

“So Murdock came back from the dead,” he says, and Karen hums absently in agreement, her mind on what she’ll say to Fisk to get him to meet her in person. They’re nearly to the bottom of the stairs when he speaks again. “You two going to get back together?”

She barely manages to keep from stumbling in surprise. “Um,” is her eloquent response. “Well. I hadn’t thought about it.” That’s the truth — the idea of giving Matt a second chance romantically had literally not entered her mind. She feels so far removed from the Karen who liked Matt. She remembers thinking he was sweet, and funny, and handsome. Now, she supposes he’s still those things, but she can no longer remember why that was enough to draw her to him. He’s lied to her so much, and even beyond that, they’re at odds in so many ways. She can’t imagine it working, and she doesn’t want to.

She’s trying to find a way to put all of that into words, when Frank bulldozes right over all of it.

“You should,” he says, and her heart thuds to a painful stop in her chest. They pause at the bottom of the stairs, just inside the doorway to the rest of the church, and Frank looks at her so earnestly that she can’t hold his gaze. “Karen, he’s good. He deserves a second chance.”

“Right,” she says. _Wrong_ , her heart says back. She tells it to shut up. After everything that’s happened this week, all the near-death experiences, thinking she’d lost Frank only to find him again — she’d thought they were both finally ready. That maybe they’d have something, after all the death and vengeance. A life, together.

She’s such a fool.

“There you are!” Foggy rounds a corner and spots them, saving her from having to come up with anything else to say.

They all pile into Frank’s truck. It’s a tight fit, and no one wants to sit next to Frank, so Karen ends up pressed to his side. It’s exactly where she wants to be, even though she tried to put Foggy between them like a human shield. The ride to the cemetery is uncomfortable on multiple levels, but Karen isn’t really relieved when it’s over.

Frank pulls into a parking spot and Matt and Foggy are out of the truck before he even shuts the engine off. Karen slides to the middle of the bench to give Frank some space, but she makes no move to get out.

It feels like she’s about to see Kevin again, even if she knows he’s not really in there. He’s gone.

“You okay?” Frank’s voice is barely a murmur, but she flinches anyway. She was so preoccupied, and he was so quiet, she kind of forgot he was there.

“Sure,” she says. It doesn’t sound any more true out loud than it did when she tried it out inside her head.

Frank nods like that’s the answer he’d expected. “You visit much?”

It takes her a long moment to be able to answer, to force the word out through a throat so tight with emotion she’s almost choking on it. “No,” she whispers. She hasn’t been here since Kevin’s funeral. It feels like a crime, another way she’s failed him. She couldn’t save him and she hasn’t avenged him and she never even visited because she couldn’t face him.

“Hey,” Frank says, reaching for her. She can’t see him through her tears, but she can feel his hands on her face, his fingers gently brushing her hair back. He swipes his thumbs carefully across her cheeks, brushing the tears away with such tenderness she’d almost believe he loves her. It’s enough to give her whiplash. “You don’t have to go in, if you don’t want to,” he says. “You can stay right here, I’ll take your lawyer boys and we’ll find that drive, okay?”

She really wants to take him up on that, but it feels like the coward’s way out, so she shakes her head. “No, I should help.” She swallows, takes a deep breath. “I’ll be okay. I can do this.”

“I know you can, sweetheart. But you don’t have to.”

She closes her eyes for a moment and just breathes. In, and out, and in, and out. “I think I need to,” she says, opening her eyes again. Frank’s expression is filled with understanding, and he nods.

They climb out of the car and get the shovels out of the bed. Matt and Foggy are waiting by the open gates with their own shovels, bickering about something trivial. They settle down when Frank and Karen join them.

Karen doesn’t hesitate, striding into the graveyard. She’s only been here once, but she knows the way. The others trail after her, Frank hot on her heels while Matt and Foggy follow at a slightly slower pace.

“Hey, Kev,” she says when she finds his grave. She can feel Frank standing a few feet behind her, the others hanging back to give her a minute, and she tries to find something to say to her brother.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I let you down, Kev. But I’m trying to make it right.”

She starts digging.

* * *

It’s nearly dawn before they find the flash drive near the head of the grave. Karen sits on the edge of the hole they dug, staring at the chunk of plastic in her hand. She’s exhausted and sweaty and certain of one thing: people who dig up graves in movies and tv shows are never dirty enough at the end. At the moment, Karen is pretty sure she’s more dirt than woman. She flops onto her back, fist clenched around the drive like it’s the only thing tethering her to consciousness. She wants a shower and to sleep for eighteen hours straight. She can hear Matt and Frank arguing about next steps, but she can’t quite motivate herself to join in.

“I’m taking her home,” Frank says.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Matt asks. He sounds extremely skeptical, but also like he doesn’t want to argue about it outright.

“She needs sleep,” Frank insists. “We all do. And Fisk will need time to regroup now that his pet killer is dead. We should have a few hours, at least, before he comes looking for her again.”

Matt must nod his agreement because next thing she knows Frank is crouching over her. “You ready?” He helps her up when she nods, and Matt and Foggy start shoveling dirt back into the hole.

She pauses by Kevin’s headstone, resting her hand atop it for a moment. “I’ll be back,” she promises him quietly. She leaves her hand there a moment longer, a silent connection to her brother, and follows Frank.

Only to stop a few steps later when she realizes Matt and Foggy aren’t following. “Aren’t they coming?”

Frank shakes his head, tugging her along. “Murdock said they’d get a cab. Or the other one, with the app, what’s it called? Super?”

Karen smiles in spite of herself. “Uber.”

“That’s the one.”

She picks at her filthy clothes, frowning skeptically. “Dressed like this?”

“It’s New York,” Frank shrugs. “No one’ll bat an eye.”

“Hah.” In spite of her sarcastic response, she’s smiling again.

They don’t talk much on the way back to the apartment. Even at this early hour, traffic is already busy. Karen nods off more than once, only to jerk awake when Fisk’s hands close around her throat in her nightmares. The third time it happens, Frank wordlessly turns on the radio and tunes to the local funk station. He sings along softly, trigger finger tapping in time to the beat, and between his voice and the upbeat music, she’s able to stay awake long enough for him to find parking only half a block away from their building.

* * *

She can’t sleep. She’s never felt so exhausted in her life, but she can’t relax. Every time she closes her eyes, the nightmares are waiting. Fisk, reaching for her. Kevin’s blood, coating her hands. The Bulletin, littered with the bodies of her colleagues. Bombers, and kidnappers, and mobsters, and how has her life contained this much terror and sadness?

The sky is just starting to lighten when she finally gets up and walks across the hall. Frank’s door is open and she stops on the threshold and knocks lightly. She feels guilty for bothering him, but he’s awake and staring at the ceiling so it’s not like she woke him up.

“Hey,” he says, leaning up on one elbow to frown at her. “You okay?”

“I can’t sleep. Nightmares,” she admits. “Can I... can I stay in here, with you?”

His frown softens into an almost-smile. “‘Course,” he says gruffly, patting the bed and scooting over. She hurries over to climb in and he starts to get up.

“Where are you going?”

“Figured I’d sleep on the floor.” He’s hovering half in and half out of bed, and she rolls her eyes.

“I’m not kicking you out of your own bed,” she grumbles, slipping under the covers. “We can share.”

He slowly eases back under the covers, lying down on his side so they’re facing each other. “Fair warning, I’m a snuggler,” Frank murmurs. “No guarantees I won’t cuddle you in my sleep.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Karen smiles sleepily. She’s already relaxing, sleep’s gentle hands reaching to pull her under. This time, she’s not afraid of it. The last thing she’s conscious of is Frank gently brushing her hair behind her ear.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t be late, Miss Page,” Fisk says, and then the line goes dead. She puts the phone down, her hands steady, her heart rate even, and looks around the table. Foggy looks hopeful, Matt determined. Frank is scowling, but he meets her gaze steadily. 
> 
> “Let’s do this,” she says.

Warm golden light floods the room when she wakes up. She’s warm and rested and—

Alone.

Okay, that’s disappointing. She won’t lie to herself. He’d teased about snuggling and she’d kind of counted on waking up in his arms. When will she stop being an idiot where Frank Castle is concerned?

She has much bigger problems, anyway, she reminds herself. A crime boss to lure into the open and murder. Plus she needs to find a new job. And also a new apartment because if she keeps living with Frank she’s going to lose her mind.

Slowly, background noises make their way through the soundproof walls of her thoughts. The burble of the coffee maker, the quiet clatter of a pan on the cooktop, the fridge door opening and closing again. Cozy, homey sounds, that are quickly joined by the sizzle of bacon frying. For a few minutes, Karen thinks _screw the bigger problems_ , and just allows herself to pretend that this is her life, that this peaceful, safe feeling can be her new normal.

Her bare feet are silent on the carpet as she slips downstairs, but Frank still turns before she’s halfway across the living room. He gives her a once-over, and whatever he’s looking for he must find, because he nods, that smirk of his taking over his mouth. He pours her a cup of coffee, sliding it across the counter to her when she perches on one of the bar stools.

“Why’d you let me sleep so late?”

“You needed the rest,” he shrugs. She moans at how good her first sip of coffee tastes, and Frank’s ears turn red. She stares at him, confused by his reaction, and he clears his throat. “You like French toast?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “You want some help?”

He squints at her. “Maybe,” he drawls. “What happened to my favorite frying pan?”

Busted. “It’s _possible_ that someone tried to make stir fry in it and, uh... burned it so badly that the whole pan had to go.” She says the last part really fast, like yanking off a bandaid. Frank just sighs and shakes his head at her.

“You’re hopeless,” he says. “Which is why I haven’t thrown away your latest stash of takeout menus even though I found them when I was looking for the pan.”

“How magnanimous of you,” she snarks. “You know, I managed to feed myself just fine for ten whole years in this city before you came along.”

Frank leans both elbows on the counter so he’s right in her face. “Maybe,” he drawls again. “But you gotta admit you eat better now that you’re with me.”

Her mouth goes dry. Is he _flirting_ with her? Fuck, she hopes so. His eyes drop to her lips when she licks them, and she leans across the counter toward him, pulled like a moth to a flame. She draws a breath, though she has no idea what she’s going to say, when her phone rings. The agitated buzzing makes them both jump, effectively derailing the tension that had been building, and she curses internally, swallowing hard as she picks it up to answer Foggy’s call.

Frank is already turning back to the stove, his movements smooth and easy like he’s completely unaffected. Karen frowns at his back, her hands shaking and her heart beating fast. It’s all she can do to sound normal when she says “Hi, Foggy.”

“Hey, Matt’s here,” he says, sounding way too cheery for a guy who spent the night digging up a grave. “Have you called Fisk yet?”

“Ah, no, not yet,” she says. “Frank is making breakfast, I was going to call after that.”

“Ohh, what’s he making?”

“French toast, why?”

“We’ll be right there!” He hangs up before she can come up with a response.

“Well, I hope you’re prepared to double that recipe,” she tells Frank as she sets her phone down. “Foggy is on his way with Matt. I forgot French toast is his magic summoning phrase.”

Frank snorts. “In that case, you’re reinstated as my sous chef.” He gestures imperiously with his spatula for her to join him in the kitchen. “But you still owe me a new pan,” he adds, leaning into her space when she’s standing next to him.

“I’m good for it,“ she promises, hands on her hips, all affronted innocence. He smiles at her, the soft, crooked one, and her heart stutters a little.

“I know you are.” His voice is a low rumble and he leans a little closer and — oh god, he’s going to finally kiss her and she’s not fucking _ready_ — except she really, _really_ is —

“Here, crack the rest of these into this dish,” he says, snaking an arm past her to grab the carton of eggs off the counter.

She blinks at him. Looks down at the eggs like she’s seeing them for the first time in her life. “Right,” she says. Her heart is beating so hard she feels like he must be able to hear it, but he gives no indication that he knows what he’s doing to her.

“After that we’ll need more nutmeg and cinnamon, so you’ll have to get the microplane back out,” he continues. He grabs a loaf of bread out of the bread box and a long serrated knife, narrating his process for her benefit. “You don’t want the slices too thick, or else the egg mixture can’t penetrate all the way to the middle and you get a dry center. No one likes that.”

She snorts, and he cuts her a look. “Mind out of the gutter, Karen.”

She cracks the last egg and starts looking for the microplane, eyeing Frank’s knife. “How come I don’t get to cut the bread?” She finds the microplane and gets the spices back out, carefully grating them into the eggs.

“You ruin the chef’s favorite pan, you lose knife privileges,” he says. “You gotta earn ‘em back first.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s a knock on the door before she can respond. She glares at his back on her way past. “It was an accident!” she protests, opening the door for Matt and Foggy without dropping her defense. “And it was your fault, anyway.”

“ _My_ fault? Oh, this should be good.”

Her friends trail after her as she heads back to the kitchen, both instantly fascinated by the argument they’ve walked into. She trades absentminded hellos with them before launching into her counter argument. “My reasons are threefold,” she says in her best imitation of Foggy’s courtroom manner. “One,” she starts, going back to her spices without missing a beat, “the fridge was full of raw food that needed to be cooked before it went bad. Raw food which _you_ bought. Two,” she finishes with the spices and Frank interjects “Don’t forget the milk.”

“ _Two_ , you weren’t here to cook any of it, which left me to do it. Or try to, anyway.” She gets the milk out of the fridge, but now she doesn’t actually know what to do with it. “What’s this for?”

“It goes in the eggs,” he says, taking it out of her hands and pouring some into the egg mixture.

“How’d you know how much to use?” She asks, squinting at the dish. He hadn’t used a measuring cup.

“Practice. Here,” he hands her a whisk, so she starts whisking everything together. “Three?”

“Three, what?”

“You said you had three reasons, but then you stopped at two.”

“I didn’t stop at two, you distracted me,” she snaps. “Three: you keep throwing away all my takeout menus! What kind of a sadist does that?” There’s a snort of laughter from the breakfast bar, which she ignores.

Frank’s face says _you’ve got me there_ but he clearly doesn’t want to admit it. “You still don’t get knife privileges,” he says.

“We should’ve brought popcorn,” Foggy says. “This is better than television.”

“Oh, much better,” Matt agrees, snagging a slice of bacon and splitting it with Foggy. “TV is such a flat experience, but this is more like going to a play.”

“Dynamic,” Foggy agrees.

Karen glares at them. “What are you doing here again?”

Foggy smiles innocently at her. “You invited us over for breakfast!”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

Matt interrupts before they can start bickering. “We’re here to support you when you call Fisk,” he says. “Which you should do soon. Preferably _before_ he decides to come looking for you.”

“Right.” He _is_ right, but she’s loathe to return to reality right now. She reluctantly picks up her phone but Frank immediately grabs it out of her hand. “Hey!”

“No threatening crime lords on an empty stomach,” he says, pocketing her phone. Great, now she’s thinking about putting her hands in his pockets.

“She has to do it sometime,” Matt argues.

“It can wait until after breakfast.”

“Yeah, I’m starving,” Foggy agrees. Karen frowns at the three of them. She’s surprised that they’re all getting along so well, but she isn’t going to complain.

“Fine. What next, chef?”

Frank walks her through the rest of the French toast process, soaking the bread in the egg mixture and frying it on the griddle pan. “You have to be patient,” he keeps saying, repeatedly grabbing her hand to stop her when she’s about to pull the bread too soon. “Let the eggs soak in. And _stop_ trying to turn the heat up, you’re gonna burn it.”

* * *

“So, what’s the game plan?” Foggy wants to know when they all have plates full of golden-brown slices of French toast and crispy bacon and are seated around the kitchen table. Karen is glad that she made Frank invest in a decent sized dining set, because they never would have all fit around the tiny one he’d had when she moved in.

“I call Fisk, tell him I have the flash drive, and get him to meet me,” she shrugs. “In return for the data, he has to promise that he won’t come after me or anyone I care about.” The French toast is perfect, creamy and not too sweet, contrasting nicely with the saltiness of the bacon.

“You think he’ll buy it?” Frank asks. “I mean, he has to know that’s your only leverage. Why would you give it up?”

“He’s underestimated me before. I’m hoping he’ll do it again.”

“Did you have a location in mind for the meet?” Matt asks.

“Well, I was thinking somewhere down at the docks, but I don’t want to seem too eager for a specific spot,” she says. “I figured I’d give him a couple options and let him have final say, make him feel more in control. But it should be somewhere with good sight lines.”

Frank’s head snaps up and he fixes her with a glare. “If you think I’m sitting my happy ass up on some roof half a mile away while you go face to face with Fisk—”

“You have to be the backup plan,” she insists. “In case it all goes—”

“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence,” Frank growls. “I’m not going through all this just to have to bury you at the end of it.”

She really wants to ask him why he’s doing it, then, but now is not the time for that. “It has to be you,” she says, trying to be the calm one. “Matt can’t do it for obvious reasons, and Foggy has to stay away in case I end up needing a lawyer. Also I don’t think he knows how to use a sniper rifle.”

“Sometimes I play Call of Duty,” he jokes, only to gulp audibly when Frank scowls at him.

“Matt will be nearby,” Karen continues. “It’s not like I’m going to be completely by myself. And I need you watching my back.”

“I don’t like it,” he grumbles, but she just gives him a look and he finally nods begrudgingly. His trigger finger is tapping frenetically against his coffee mug so she presses her knee against his under the table. A few moments later, the tapping slows, though it doesn’t stop completely.

Matt frowns thoughtfully, his head turning like he’s listening to something, but Karen picks up her phone and dials the hotel’s number before he has a chance to comment on whatever is going on between her and Frank.

Her name is enough to get her connected directly to Fisk. It’s a quick phone call. He tries to start monologuing a couple times, but she cuts him off. It’s almost too easy to get him to name a location near the docks for their meeting. His smug superiority makes her grind her teeth, but she keeps a touch of fearful respect in her voice. He picks a time later that night for the trade, and she doesn’t argue. She wants this over with.

“Don’t be late, Miss Page,” he says, and then the line goes dead. She puts the phone down, her hands steady, her heart rate even, and looks around the table. Foggy looks hopeful, Matt determined. Frank is scowling, but he meets her gaze steadily.

“Let’s do this,” she says.

* * *

The docks, it turns out, are fucking cold in the middle of the night. Her black trench coat, usually the perfect weight for this time of year, is just not cutting it tonight. The breeze off the river is slicing right through it, and the unreasonably heavy body armor Frank made her wear underneath it doesn’t seem to be helping, which gives her some reservations about its potential efficacy at its actual job of stopping bullets.

They’d all scattered after their late afternoon breakfast: Foggy back to work, Matt to his place to do whatever he does when he’s between vigilante gigs, she and Frank to finish prepping for that night. They’d waited a reasonable amount of time after Matt left before discussing their plans more openly with each other.

“You really want to do this?” he’d asked, grave and steady. He’s always steady, like gravity. Strong, and constant, and vital.

“I really do.”

So they did. They planned, and they prepared, and they called Matt with the part of the plan they wanted him to have. She feels a little guilty about cutting him out of the loop, but not enough to make her be honest with him. She’s aware of the hypocrisy, but just this one time, she doesn’t care. This one mission is too important to let Matt’s morals dictate how it goes down.

Now she’s standing alone in the middle of a warehouse’s empty loading yard waiting for her worst nightmare to show up. She and Frank have been in place for ages, but Matt hasn’t made it to his rendezvous. She’s trying not to worry about that since it kind of works out in her favor. She has a greater chance of pulling this off with Frank if Matt isn’t there to interfere. Or so she keeps telling herself.

She refuses to shiver, in spite of the cold. She can hear Frank’s voice in her ear, telling her to stop pacing. He’d given her the little plastic ear piece before they left, and she’d somehow managed not to ask him where he got it. She’s really curious about it though, wondering if he’s still in contact with Micro. Hopefully they’ll have lots of time to talk about everything that’s happened to them over the past week after this is all over.

“What if Fisk doesn’t come?” She can’t help the question — it’s been eating at her since their phone call ended that afternoon.

“He’ll be here,” Frank says.

“But—“

“Karen. He’ll be here.”

She subsides, resisting the urge to glance over her shoulder at the roof of the building where Frank is waiting with his rifle. It’s weirdly quiet there by the water. They’re still in New York City, but all the noise of traffic and people seems very far off. Under any other circumstances, she might find it peaceful. Tonight, it makes her skin crawl. It leaves her alone with everything she wants so badly and is afraid she’ll never have.

She draws breath to say something — anything, to break the silence — and Frank laughs, a warm rumble that sends shivers down her spine. “You’d have made a terrible sniper, ma’am,” he says, but somehow it doesn’t sound like an insult. “No patience.”

She shrugs, smiling in spite of the cold and the stress. “Yeah... patience was never my strong suit,” she admits. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know,” she says. “Wrongs to right, justice to serve.”

He laughs. “Sounds about right.”

She checks her watch for the fifteenth time, but there are still at least five minutes before Fisk is supposed to show.

“Frank— what happens when he’s gone?” He doesn’t respond for a moment and she hurries to explain. “I mean, you got your revenge, and I’m about to get mine. What am I supposed to do when it’s done?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he murmurs. “I think that’s the hard part, is figuring that out.”

“You got any ideas?”

“Yeah, I’ve got this friend, she’s a lot smarter than me,” he says, and the warmth of his voice freezes her in place. “She told me she wanted more. An after, for me.”

Was that only a few weeks ago? Nice to know she managed to get through that thick skull of his. “And what do you want?”

“I want an after for me, too.” His voice is impossibly soft. God, she wishes she could see his face right now. “And I want one for her. I think we deserve it.”

“Yeah,” she chokes out. “I think I want that, too.”

“That’s what happens, then. When Fisk is gone, we look for after.”

“Okay,” she says, feeling unaccountably relieved.

“Okay?”

She can’t help it. She turns to look directly at his vantage point, hoping his scope allows him to see her face in the dim light of a nearby street light. “Okay,” she says, as firmly as she’s able.

Tires crunch on the old, crumbling asphalt behind her, and she whips around. A huge black SUV circles the loading yard and pulls to a stop about forty feet away. The front doors open and two hulking men in dark suits get out. Frank growls angrily: one has an assault rifle, which he luckily keeps pointed at the ground. She’s not sure she can trust Frank not to prematurely shoot the guy if he points it at her.

The driver opens the back door, and Fisk steps out. He’s wearing a beautiful bespoke white suit and a superior look on his face, both of which she can’t wait to ruin. He surveys the area leisurely and smiles when he spots her.

She can’t repress the shiver of dread that runs through her then.

“Miss Page,” he calls, sauntering across the intervening space toward her. His goons follow a few steps behind, and Karen moves to meet them. The driver pulls out a pistol, and his partner flicks the safety off of his rifle.

“If they point those at you—“ Frank’s voice is furious in her ear, but she cuts him off.

“Stick to the plan,” she murmurs, trying not to move her mouth too much.

“Calling for your friend?” Fisk smirks. She panics a little, wondering if he knows about Frank, if he’s sent people to find him. “I’m afraid Mr. Murdock won’t be joining us this evening,” he continues. She’s simultaneously relieved that he’s not talking about Frank and still worried about Matt, both emotions warring for dominance. “I sent him a small gift, it should be keeping him occupied.”

Relief wins. It’s likely Matt can handle anything Fisk sent his way, and it explains why he’s late.

Karen stops a few feet away from Fisk. “I brought your flash drive,” she says, letting her voice shake. She wants Fisk to feel confident right now. He holds out his hand, smiling like a snake.

“Hand it over, Miss Page.”

“Not yet,” she says. She pulls her left hand out of her pocket to show him the drive, but she holds it out of reach. “Your promise?”

“About that...” Fisk’s lip curls. “There’s been a change of plan, Miss Page. I’d like you to come with us.” He gestures back toward his vehicle, almost graciously inviting her to let herself be kidnapped. Both of his goons are instantly on high alert, their guns pointing directly at Karen’s heart.

Which is when their car explodes.

One of them looks around, frowning, at the strange whistle in the air which she knows is from the rocket Frank just launched, but Fisk and the other guard remain focused on her. She looks Fisk in the eye and smiles sweetly as his expensive SUV blows up. The way he jumps, startled and furious, is a beautiful thing to behold, and both of his goons turn fully around to stare at the brilliant orange fireball that used to be their ride.

“Ah,” she says. “You’re right about one thing, Wilson: there has been a change of plan.”

Mr. Assault Rifle starts to swing his weapon around to aim at her again, and gets a bullet through the heart from Frank’s sniper rifle for his trouble. The driver has the presence of mind to lower his weapon. Fisk slowly lowers his hands back down to his sides. He’d gotten uncomfortably close to grabbing her.

“I’m not going with you, Wilson,” she says, fiddling with the flash drive. His eyes track it obsessively. “You don’t get to bury me in an unmarked grave somewhere. I’m not even going to give you this.” She waves the little bit of plastic under his nose. “The cops are probably already on their way here, but I don’t think we’ll wait for them.”

Fisk laughs, loud and long, laughs so hard he staggers back a couple paces in his hysteria. “You think the _cops_ will save you, Karen Page?” He shouts. “You think the law can protect you from me?”

Karen looks at him, her face impassive. For the first time in years, she’s not afraid of this man.

“No,” she says, pulling her right hand out of her pocket. The gun Frank gave her earlier is warm from spending so long next to her body. Her hand doesn’t shake, and her gaze doesn’t waver from Fisk, not even when the driver moves to shoot her and gets shot by Frank in return.

“You don’t have the spine to kill me,” Fisk says, his lip curling again.

“You know, it’s funny: Wesley said almost exactly the same thing before I shot him.”

Everything seems to happen in slow motion after that:

Fisk’s face contorts in rage.

He rushes at her.

She pulls the trigger.

The first shot hits him where his heart should be. He keeps coming.

She keeps firing. Again, and again, tearing through his perfect white suit and his throat and finally his face.

Momentum brings him in close, close enough to grab her. His meaty hands close on her shoulders as he stumbles to his knees, but his grip is almost gentle. The hate in his eyes is being replaced by confusion and fear, and Karen presses her gun to his forehead, using it to shove him off of her without getting blood on her hands. He falls heavily to the ground at her feet.

“Matt’s not my only friend, you know,” she says conversationally. “I’d say ‘do better research next time,’ but there isn’t going to be a next time. Not for you, Wilson.”

He’s gurgling unpleasantly now, blood welling up through the holes in his chest and neck and face. And then he’s gone. The light in his eyes goes out, and a horrible rasping sound claws it’s way out of his throat as he dies.

She puts the gun back in her pocket. She’ll throw it in the river later. Then she wipes her fingerprints off of the flash drive and drops it onto Fisk’s chest. Might as well tie up the Union Allied mess at the same time. She can already hear sirens in the distance, getting closer.

“You can rest now, Kevin,” she whispers to the wind. Then she walks away, heading for her rendezvous point with Frank.

* * *

He’s pacing next to his truck when she turns the last corner into the alley where he parked. He sees her and she wishes she had time to parse the emotions that flicker over his face, but they have another stop to make. He meets her halfway, scanning the alley behind her while he walks her to the car.

“You did good, sweetheart,” he says, and she smiles at him tiredly.

“We have to go check on Matt.”

“Yeah, I heard Fisk bragging. We’ll go make sure he’s okay.”

* * *

The inside of Matt’s building is littered with semi-conscious, groaning individuals. Karen and Frank pick their way upstairs. Matt’s front door is ajar, but when she pushes it open, she finds a surprisingly unscathed apartment inside. Matt is sprawled on the couch, on the phone with the cops. He’s bruised and disheveled, a few rips and bloodstains on his striped pajamas, but Karen supposes this is pretty normal for him. He waves casually at them to come in.

“I’d like to report an attempted kidnapping,” he’s saying. “Yes, I am in a safe place. Yes, I’ll hold.”

“What are you gonna tell them?” Frank asks, and Matt snorts.

“I was attacked and beaten, and then _someone_ came along and rescued me,” he says. “Who did the rescuing? Sorry, officers, I didn’t _see_ anything.” He smiles innocently, and Karen laughs. Frank moves over to the windows to keep an eye out for the cops, and the innocent smile drops off Matt’s face.

“You didn’t have to kill Fisk,” Matt says, glowering at her. “You could’ve sent him back to jail.” Frank scoffs quietly, but he doesn’t turn around.

“I could have,” Karen agrees, nodding calmly. “But I didn’t.”

Matt sighs. “Yeah.” There doesn’t seem to be much else to say. He jerks his head at Frank. “You better get him out of here before the cops arrive,” he says, which is an excellent idea. Karen wants nothing more than to go home and sleep for a week, preferably with Frank. And the sleeping part is optional.

“Call if you need anything, Matt,” she says, firmly enough that she hopes he’ll actually listen. She puts her hand in Frank’s and pulls him toward the door.

“You don’t want to stay?” Frank murmurs as they head for the truck. He’s holding onto her hand like his life depends on it. The night is dark and cold but Karen has never felt lighter.

There are so many things she could say in response, but she settles for the simplest of them: “Nope.” She holds his gaze and smiles and for once she doesn’t try to hide the depth of her feelings for him. “I want you to take me home.”

His eyes widen in surprise and then hope. The wonder of it softens all the sharp edges of his face and he reaches for her, his hands sliding over her shoulders and up into her hair, pulling her closer and closer. He hesitates a moment, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of Matt’s apartment. “You think he’s listening?”

“I think I don’t care,” Karen says, and kisses him. He laughs into her mouth and then he’s kissing her back, and it’s like he’s breathing light right down into her soul. They kiss, and kiss, and some cabbie driving by honks at them and they break apart, laughing and out of breath and unwilling to let go. He trails kisses over her cheek and temple, nuzzling into the sensitive spot below her ear.

“You have terrible taste in men, ma’am,” Frank murmurs against her skin.

“Lucky you,” she whispers.

* * *

She wakes up late the next morning, warm and sore in all the right places and so tangled up in Frank that she can’t tell where she ends and he begins. She stretches against him just to feel his arms tighten around her. He hums sleepily.

“Thought you were going to sleep all day,” he mumbles. His lips brush her collar bone with every word, sending little tingles through her skin.

“You’re not even awake!”

He opens his eyes, smiling a surprisingly sharklike smile for someone who’s looking at her with eyes as warm and sleepy as a puppy’s. “I could be,” he says suggestively, sending a bolt of heat straight through her.

So it’s nearly noon before they stumble out of bed.

They spend the week ignoring the world. Cooking, and bickering, and having sex on every available surface of their apartment. And talking. Hours of sharing all their deep, dark secrets and their bright, fragile hopes. It takes days for them to get through all of the shit they’ve both been through in the weeks they were apart, and Karen realizes, not for the first time, that her life is completely insane. It might be time to do something about that.

They take a road trip down the east coast, stopping at every beach and roadside attraction that catches their fancy, staying in crappy motels and eating in diners and little hole in the wall bars. She learns that Frank likes to dance and that he’s surprisingly good at it. Frank learns that she can drink him under the table while also kicking his ass at pool.

When they finally get back to the city, Karen feels more happy and at peace than she has in years. They both find new jobs, him in an artisanal cabinetry shop and her working the front desk at a local veterinary office. Their lives are quiet and simple and no one tries to kill either of them. He grows his beard back out and when she comes home with a puppy one day he just laughs and asks if they can name her Max.

They still see Matt and Foggy socially and they’re surprisingly chill about her and Frank. Matt’s ex, who everyone thought was dead, shows up and they get back together. She’s basically chaos incarnate but Karen actually really likes her. Josie’s remains their favorite hangout even though Frank complains constantly about the shitty beer. He goes to Curt’s support group and the three of them meet for coffee on the weekends. The Liebermans have them over for dinner at least once a month. Their kids are obsessed with Max and spoil her terribly.

It’s a quiet, simple life — but it’s good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and especially to everyone who commented, you are all my favorite.


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